Redneck Sushi
by GoldenGirl
Summary: Sequel to Children of the Hatch. The islanders have kids. Now those kids are all grown up. Well they're just 3. Wackiness ensues. Skate.
1. Chapter 1

TITLE: Redneck Sushi

PAIRING: Skate

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Lost. Don't sue me.

GENRE: Parody

A/N: This is a sequel to my story "Children of the Hatch." You can find it in my profile.

**Chapter 1: "Above the title"  
(In advertisements, when the performer's name appears before the title of the show or play. Reserved for the big stars!)**

Sawyer awoke in the middle of the night to a noise somewhere outside his hut. He saw that Kate hadn't woken, nor had Gunner, so he attempted to go back to bed. But then he heard it again. Maybe it was the disorientation from being in a state of flux between asleep and wakefulness, but it sounded like a struggle. He decided to go check it out.

Outside he tried to locate the sound and once he did he saw that it was Jin. His mouth was gagged and he was being bound and dragged away by Others. Before Sawyer could react, before he could even make the decision to either try and save Jin's life or stay with his family and protect their's, he was being bound and dragged off too.

From outside his own hut, Jack was witnessing all of this. He stayed frozen, watching as the others dragged Jin and Sawyer away. If he squinted- who are we kidding, of course he was squinting- he could see Eko and Locke being dragged away farther down the beach in the same manner. All he could think was that in the next few seconds he'd be next.

A few seconds passed.  
Then minutes.

Nothing was happening. The rest of the men were being taken beyond the treeline and into the jungle he was just being left alone. Jack could not comprehend this, but he wasn't just going to stand there.

He ran as fast as he could to the Others until he reached them. And once he did reach them, he deliberately fell over them, into their arms.

"NO!" He yelled. "YOU CAN'T TAKE ME! LET ME GO!"

The Other's hands that he fell into promptly dropped him on the ground. They continued moving but Jack latched onto one of their ankles. "WHY DO YOU WANT ME?" he screamed, coughing up the dirt and soil he was collecting in his mouth as the Other dragged him with his foot.

"I KNOW YOU WANT ME BUT WHY THEM? I WON'T LET MY FRIENDS PAY FOR MY MISTAKES!" He yelled. "NOT THAT I'VE EVER MADE ANY MISTAKES!"  
He was still being dragged by the limping Other, but now Jack had grabbed hold of a better part of the man's leg and was sitting on his foot with his arms wrapped around the thigh.

"KATE WILL BE SO MISERABLE WITHOUT ME- PLEASE! PLEASE DON'T TAKE ME!"

"He's making too much noise," one Other said.  
"He's already seen us," another muttered.  
"Fine, bring him along!"

And that's how Jack, along with Sawyer, Jin, Hurley, Eko, Sayid and Locke, got taken by the Others.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: "Beginners"  
(Those members of the cast who are on-stage when the curtain goes up.) **

The seven men taken by the others were all on their knees, their hands tied behind their backs, their mouths gagged. Before them stood the infrequently-bearded Tom and a few of his men holding rifles to the castaways.

"SKJDVBHSDV SDFIVB AFOVIUH AFDV!" Yelled Jack.

The Others had endured Jack's consistent spit-spraying gibberish long enough and so they degagged all of the men.  
Sawyer spoke first.

"Where's Gunner! Where's Kate!" he demanded. "I swear to god, if you dragged us away so that you could do something to our–"

"Relax Sawyer. We didn't touch any of your kids or lady friends. We needed all of you here because we're impressed by the seeds you've all planted."

"Seeds!" Jack said. "You should've taken Sun. I havent planted any seeds!"  
Wasn't that the truth.

"We're talking about children, Jack. You all have intrepid little tykes runnin' around this island. Those are some special kids."

"They're mostly mine," Jack said.

"Would you just _shut up_?" Sawyer hissed.

"You should listen to your friend, Jack."

"NO!" Jack yelled defiantly. "You listen and you listen good. I will never, EVER, listen to Sawyer, you got that?" Calming down a bit and taking a breath, Jack went on. "Why did you take Eko, Locke, Hurley and Sayid if you just want the fathers? They never fathered anyone. Let them go."

The Others, and in fact everyone who wasnt Jack, shared some uncomfortable, discreet looks for an uncomfortably long lull.

"Anyway," Tom continued. "If you can produce children like that, then you can produce what we will need from you."

"More children?" Sawyer asked wearily. They had been bound and gagged, dragged through the jungle in middle of the night, and taken away from their families while they slept, but it was only now that Sawyer was starting to get worried. The women Others didnt look very tempting. Or clean for that matter. And Sawyer really liked his women clean. Or at least cleaner than the toothless chick aiming a rifle at his head. (It was a good thing Kate loved showers).

"Way ahead of ya, Zeke," Sawyer said. "My girl's already got a bun in the oven. And I'm sure these fellas'll get crackin' on knockin' up some more broads as soon as you let us go. Well, maybe not Jin." And then he mouthed the word _blanks_.

"Although we love them very much and to a disturbing degree," Tom said, "we don't need any more children. We want something else."

"I know you want me," Jack said. "But why do you want my friends? I'll give you whatever you want, just let them go." Then he turned to Jin. "When you go back, tell them what I did."

The Others, amazingly, seemed to be considering this. Tom grabbed one of his companions and walked away from the captives to confer.

"Why did you come?" Jin asked Jack.  
"Shut up, Jin. I have a plan."  
"I think what our buddy Jin is askin' is why your plan didnt include _running off to get help as soon as you saw what was happening_."  
"Yes, that too," Jin said.

"Live together die alone, man," Jack said simply.

The men all grunted and rolled their eyes.

"You know what would be great, Jackass?" Sawyer began. "If you just for once stopped using your own catchphrases to get us through these life and death situations."

"Did nobody hear me?" Jack protested. "I just said I have a plan, and I do. I'm going to save all of you so if you could just bare with me and give me a little re–"  
"What's the plan?" Sawyer interrupted.  
Jack sighed, impatiently. "I'm not going to do what they ask."  
"But you just told them you'd do anything they wanted you to."

Now Jack closed his eyes in impatience, not wanting to deal with the constant questions from people of lesser minds. He pressed his lips against his teeth and flared his nostrils just as a bead of sweat rolled off the tip of his nose. He had this look in his eye as if he was compelling himself to sweat real hard. As if sweating would be the physical manifestation of how hard his brain was working right now. And he _was_ sweating more than the rest of the men.

"I'm going to bide my time, Sawyer. Once I figure out their weaknesses I'll find a way to get free."  
Before Sawyer could tell him that that was the worst plan he'd ever heard, Tom and his Other friend came back to stand before them.

"We'll let all of you go as soon as you do something for us."


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: "Blackout"  
(Lighting term: switching all lights out at once, leaving the stage in complete darkness)**  
Kate was the first one who'd noticed the men were gone.

Ana wasn't staying with Jack anymore so she wasn't there for him to scream in her ear and wake her up like he most certainly would have. Sun didn't notice anything either. She later said that she was having the most peaceful sleep of her life. (Apparently Jin was an unyielding cuddler/grabber). So when Kate rolled over that night, reaching for Sawyer and finding nothing there, she immediately woke up, alerted. 

At the moment, Ana Lucia was standing (actually she was pacing) in front of a group of women, including a distraught Sun and Kate, and a frightened Charlie.

"We need to go after them!" Kate said.

"No,"Ana Lucia answered back, apparently having taken the leadership position now that Jack was gone. "We don't go after them. You wanna know why?" she asked, her nostrils flared and her eyes focused menacingly on Kate. "Because Sun always ends up fainting or getting knocked out. Because you always end up ruining everyone's plans and getting caught. And because whenever there's a gun in my hand I'm the friendliest player in a game of friendly fire. That's why!"

Nobody protested and Ana inhaled deeply, centering herself, and seemingly coming up with a solution to all of this.

"The only solution, the only possible thing left to do," she said, "is to become lesbians."

She sure thought of that solution fast.

As much as Kate wanted to go looking for Sawyer and the rest of the men, she knew she couldn't. Hers wasn't the only life she'd be endangering anymore. And she couldn't leave Gunner with two parents missing. She knew Sawyer would've wanted her to stay where she was and look after herself and their son.

She could've done a lot of things during those excruciating early morning hours since Sawyer's disappearance. One of those things though, probably shouldn't have been waking up her three-year-old to tell him the news when it very well have been pushed off till morning. But then again, Kate wasn't your typical mother.

Which was why at four in the morning she sat Gunner down in front of her and readied herself to tell him the news as he wiped the sleep from his eyes. 

"Sweetie, there's no need to panic," was the first thing she said.  
Even though Sawyer always told her Gunner looked more like her she knew he only said that because they shared the same color eyes. To her, Gunner was all Sawyer. His eyes may have been green but they had Sawyer's mischievous gleam. And he had his dimples. God, she was already missing Sawyer's dimples. The same ones that made her melt and drove Jack crazy with jealousy. And just like his dad, Gunner hated having his hair cut. She was always sweeping it out of his eyes.

Maybe it was the sight of her own mini little Sawyer, or maybe it was the hormones, but as she looked at Gunner, she broke down in tears. It was probably the hormones.

"Everything's going to be okay!" Her shaky voice was bordering on frantic now. "Really, there's no need to worry!"

As the memory of his mother crying in front of him began etching itself into the 'trauma' part of his brain, Gunner slowly started to notice that his father wasn't in the hut with them.

"Where Daddy go?" he asked.

Kate's face scrunched up into a mess of grief before she finally blurted out, "He's probably not dead!"

The memory of his mother telling him his father probably wasn't dead began making itself comfortable in the now increasingly roomy traumatic part of his brain.

"He waked up?" He asked.

Kate nodded, trying to compose herself by blinking away her tears and wiping her damp cheeks with her sleeve.  
"We think he was taken by the Others."  
"Who is they?"  
"They're the bad people who live on the other side of the island who like to take people like mommy and daddy and kidnap them for a while. Sometimes the women Others grope in lesbian ways."

The boy stared at her.  
"And Lucia can show you what that means," she explained.

The traumatized part of Gunner's brain was starting to get a little bit cluttered.

The way he was looking at her, Kate probably should've been able to figure that out, but all she registered was that he was confused. She realized that her poor boy probably didn't understand any of this.

In fact, he understood all of it.  
"It's Okay, Gun," she said, hugging him and then picking him up to put him back to bed. "Don't worry your sweet little head about it." She kissed him on the top of his head and laid him down. "Sweet dreams."

Suffice to say, Gunner's dreams would not be sweet that night.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: "It isnt over until the Ana sings"  
(It's an expression)**

Daybreak brought with it a lot of changes on the island now that most of the men were gone. Ana Lucia's plan to turn the place into The Land Of Lesbians, although widely ignored, was already coming underway. Not surprisingly, she and Libby were the ones to move forward with it. And Charlie, wanting to be accepted and keep up with the changing times, also made the important life-changing decision to become a lesbian.

Kate, determined to put up a strong front in Sawyer's absence, declared herself a fiercely independent single mother and was currently trying to convince Sun to join her in the fight to end single mother discrimination.

"What discrimination?" Sun had asked.  
"I see how people look at me now that Sawyer's gone."  
"I think they are trying to tell you to stop Gunner from running around naked trying to set fire to some things...Specifically Locke's hut?"  
"He's going through a tough time right now," was all Kate had said.

Yep, the island had definitely changed in the few hours since the men were gone. In fact, the evidence was clear to the men themselves as they returned from their harrowing ordeal with the Others just in time to witness a testosterone-driven field hockey game Ana Lucia and Libby were partaking in.

In had only been a few hours since their capture but all the guys who had been taken were back. All but Jack. Ana and Libby were the first to notice their return. Both looked disappointed. After that though, more people started noticing and running towards them, happy to see them alive.

But Ana wasn't gonna have it that easy. The first thing she did as new island leader (besides the lesbianism thing) was put all of the men in a sort of quarantine. They were only gone for a few hours but they still may have been "compromised" after all. Luckily she had already dug a pit to put them into. It was originally a grave for her next "accident" victim (actually _victims_ since it was a pretty big pit), but it could work for this too.

So before anybody could properly reunite with their loved ones, the guys were put into a 8 foot deep pit in a secluded part of the beach. Going to see them was kind of like visiting someone in prison.

Or at least that's how Kate explained the situation to her young son.  
She and Gunner kneeled down in front of the bamboo grate covering the deep hole and looked down at Sawyer.

"I thought I'd never see you again," Kate said. She reached her hand through the bamboo and Sawyer reached up, grabbing hold of it like he'd thought the same thing. Thanks to Jin, who's back he was currently standing on, he was able to reach her.  
"You know I'd never leave you like that, Freckles."  
"Kate," Sayid said, coming up behind Sawyer. "We all know you'd like to be with Sawyer again. And the rest of us would like to go home. So if you could just–"  
"Shhhh," Gunner said, holding his index finger vertically over his lips. "Mommy and Daddy talking."

Sayid looked at the boy, unamused. Sure, everyone else in the camp thought Gunner was adorable, but Sayid didn't. He saw him as a naughty little boy with a typically silly American name. Which actually wasn't too far off. 

But it wasn't just Gunner who he disliked, it was all kids. There had been children around the island for a while now but the older they got, the less Sayid liked them. He never really understood their logic. And they never said anything relevant at all. He hoped Jacka Sayida would be different.

"Yes Gunner," he said, "but there are more pressing matters at hand. Kate, there seems to be a large object weighting the bamboo down over this covered part. A boulder perhaps. If you could just–" His words got caught in his mouth as he coughed, suddenly finding himself choking on some sand.

"Could you please tell your son to stop throwing sand on me?"

"I'm making you a big welcome back dinner for when you get out of here," Kate told Sawyer.  
Sawyer smiled. "How 'bout a welcome back breakfast? I'm starving."  
"But you're not getting out until dinner time," she said.  
"Come again?" 

"Kate, Ana's not here right now," Sayid said. "You can easily just lift–"  
"Mommy, gotta go wee-wee!" Gunner exclaimed.

"Ok, Gun, go ahead," she said. "Ana says you're all probably compromised and it's best that you stay here for a while and forget everything the Others have done to you."  
Sawyer laughed. "You don't believe her, do you?" And now more seriously he said, "_do you?_"  
She shrugged. "It's just a precaution."

"Your son is urinating on my head!" Sayid yelled.  
"Daddy I go wee-wee!"  
"'Atta boy, Gun." Sawyer now turned his attention back to Kate. "We ain't compromised!"  
"Ok, sure Pookie. You tell me all about it at dinner, how's that sound?"

She stood up and wiped the sand off her knees. And once Gunner was done whizzing on Sayid's head he kicked some more sand into the man's eyes.

"Where are you goin', Freckles?" Sawyer asked as she walked away while Sayid screamed something about his burning corneas.  
"See you in approximately 14 hours, Sawyer!"  
Gunner waved.

"Come back!" Sawyer shouted. "Locke needs to go to the bathroom!"  
"I do," Locke concurred. "And it's not. Number 1." He smiled genially.

Sawyer started jumping up and down, seeing only Kate and Gunner's retreating figures and subsequently causing some major damage to Jin's lower back. He also saw, however, a new person approaching the pit. Actually it was two people.

Ana bent over the pit and sneered at its new inhabitants.  
"How do you like the pit?" She asked them.  
"It's kinda, like... hot down here," Hurley said.

"Sounds like something the Others would tell you to say," Ana responded. "Just out of curiosity, is Jack dead?"  
Eko answered her. "No, he is not. He was the only one of us willing to do what the Others asked of him. He is a brave and stupid man."  
Ana frowned. "Is he coming back?"  
"It may be months, maybe years before we see him again."  
Ana considered this. "That a promise?"

"Is there anything you wanted or is your presence just added punishment?" Sawyer groaned.

Ana smiled and stuck a long branch through the bamboo. She poked all the men inside until she had their full attention.

"Listen up," she said. "You're all staying down here for a couple more hours. But I know you'll all be missing some female companionship. So I brought you Charlie."

She opened the bamboo grate and let Charlie jump in.  
He sprang to his feet and smiled brightly as he saw his friends again. "Hey guys. I'm a lesbian now."


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: "Amphitheatre"  
(An outdoor theatrical setting, usually with a large seating area to provide convenient accommodation for large numbers of spectators)**

By dinnertime Sawyer was out of the pit. And just as Kate had promised, she made him a special welcome back dinner. The special dinner turned out to be the oft had boar meat. But Sawyer couldn't blame Kate. There wasn't much on this island that she could've surprise him with. And even less she could actually cook.

And so the Austen-Fords sat at a small table outside their hut. Sawyer was cutting Gunner's meat for him as Kate spoke about her day.

"Ana Lucia didn't want to but then out of nowhere Claire said she'd be up for joining the single mothers brigade. And I was like, of course! You're a single mom, how could I forget? I never knew how hard she had it."

Sawyer chewed on some of his boar meat and nodded the way most guys did when they were pretending to listen. "Don't you wanna know what happened to me and the rest of the guys?"

Kate could tell he was only pretending to listen. "Right, the Others. You were taken. I almost forgot what with all the single parenting I had to do this morning."

Sawyer thought he detected some sarcasm in Kate's voice. "How long was it that you were a single mom? An hour?"  
"You know Sawyer, it's people like you who make it so much harder on us!"

He was about to snap back when he saw the way her chin was quivering like it always did right before she cried. He really hated when she cried.

"Baby, don't cry."

Those words seemed to be the catalyst for her tears to fall. Or maybe it was just the hormones.

Sawyer stood up and went over to her, taking her in his arms and trying to calm her down. "Come on, Freckles, you don't wanna scare the kid, do you?"

Unfortunately, he was a few hours too late to warn Kate about how crying in front of your child can scar them for life. 

"It must've been hard being a single mom," Sawyer began, talking to the back of her neck. "Even though I'm insulted that you didn't have enough faith in me to wait too long before declaring yourself one."

She wailed even louder.  
"Just a _little_ insulted," he said.

"What's the matter with me," Kate said. "I never cry like this unless Jack's screaming at me."  
"I know," Sawyer said, soothingly rubbing her back with the palm of his hand. She seemed to be a bit more calm now so Sawyer kissed her on the temple and went back to his dinner. 

"It's only Bump, sweetie," Kate tried explaining to Gunner. "Bump's making mommy cry."  
Upon saying this Kate had inadvertently lit the fires that would start a sibling rivalry between Gunner and Bump. Feeling protective of his mother, much the way Sawyer was so protective of Kate, Gunner began feeling his first pangs of animosity towards his brother/sister for making her cry. 

"So," Sawyer said, trying to start his dinner conversation again. "The Others. They took me and the guys. First they told us they wanted us because we were able to produce such special kids."

Kate smiled, wiping away the last of her tears. "Hear that, Gunner? The Others think your special."

"Then they took all our shoes off. Said they were lookin' to see if we had four toes."  
"Weird."  
"It gets weirder. They told us the real reason they wanted us was so that we could write a play for them."  
"A play?"  
"Yeah. Turns out they're theater junkies. That's why they got all those costumes."  
"You're kidding."  
"Nope. Know why they snatched all those kids a couple years back? They were looking to fill up roles in their very own production of Peter Pan.'"  
"Wow."

Sawyer brought a forkful of meat to his mouth but stopped midway as a curious sight met his eyes.

Standing a few feet in front of him were all five of Jack's kids.

They were a curious sight indeed.  
It was so hard to believe they were actually related when you looked at them standing in a line like that. Let alone that four of them were actually quadruplets.

Jack Juan Locke looked like the most normal kid of the bunch, only he was still completely hairless. Could've been chalked up to a case of alopecia, perhaps, but most people suspected that he secretly shaved his head.  
Jack Eko Jr. was so much taller than his brothers and sisters. He looked to be about seven even though he was only three.  
Jack Hugo was growing bigger too but not in height.And Josefina was just... well, she was Josefina.  
Jacka Sayida still had time to grow into a beautiful girl though. So long as she stopped torturing insects.

All the kids were just standing there staring at Sawyer and his family having their dinner.  
Sawyer chose to ignore them.

"I don't know how they got the play idea from the fact that we produce good kids."

Josefina rawred.

Kate seemed to notice the kids for the first time now.  
"Oh hey guys," she said. "What are you all doing here?"

They were close enough to smell the food on their plates and they were looking kind of hungry. 

"So anyway, Jack said he would do whatever they wanted," Sawyer continued. "And that's why he's off in the jungle talkin' 'bout stage directions while I'm out here enjoying my boar."  
"Sawyer!" Kate whispered. "Don't mention Jack in front of them." She nodded in the kids' direction.

Sawyer scowled. "Well what are they even doin' here?" he whined. "They're just creepin' me out staring at us like that."

"I'm sure they'll be on their way soon."  
"Did you invite them for dinner?" Sawyer asked his son. "What did I tell you about those kids, Gun?"  
"If they spit on me, go to daddy for pemiciwin," the boy responded.  
"That's right. Now git!" he told the kids.

"Sawyer, their father is gone," Kate said. "What if it was Jack who fed them their dinner? What if they're starving right now? They're probably so scared." Kate started tearing up.

"Baby, don't cry."

Kate stood up and went to Jack's kids, pulling them into a tight hug. "It's okay," she said, crying. We'll take you in until Jack gets back."

"They already got a mother!" Sawyer said. "Heck, most of 'em got fathers just down the beach!"

She wailed even louder.

"Fine!" Sawyer said. "Bring the bastards on over!"

Kate's tears immediately disappeared as she brought the kids to the table. She handed the smallest child, Jacka Sayida, to Sawyer.  
"Do you guys want some food?" Kate asked them.

"MOTHER ALREADY GAVE US SUPPER!" Josefina yelled.  
"Oh," Kate said. "Then why are you here?"

Jack Eko spoke for his siblings and pointed to Sawyer. "The sound of his voice soothes us."

Sawyer sighed, cursing himself for his terribly soothing voice. He stared at the little girl in his hands. She sneered and shouted, "Jacka Sayida!"


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6: "Fire!"  
(The one thing you're not supposed to shout in a crowded theater)**

Sawyer and his now full table were enjoying their dinner, or at least trying to enjoy it as much as one can while being stared at by 5 children. They all stopped what they were doing, though, when they heard a commotion.

Carrying his son with him, Sawyer, followed by Kate and Jack's brood, went to see what all the fuss was about. It seemed as if people were saying that Jack was back. Turning the corner of their hut, they could see that it was true.

Jack emerged from the jungle looking dazed and mystified. Stepping onto the sand, he shaded his eyes even though the sun had already gone down a couple of hours ago. And as he staggered forward, looking weak and thirsty as if he'd been on a long pilgrimage, he almost bumped into the castaways who were coming to greet him. Mainly, he almost bumped into Hurey, Locke and Eko.

When he saw them, he froze, amazed.  
"Is it really you?" He whispered, tears springing to his eyes. "I've been away for so long."

He'd been away for less than 20 hours.

"You've all gotten so big... Jack Juan Locke. Jack Hugo." Cupping Eko's face he said, " Lil' Jose."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw something big moving in the bushes. It's hairy body was rubbing against a tree and it was bathing in a wallow.

His bottom lip quivering, Jack muttered, "Josefina?"

It was a boar.

"She's gotten so beautiful," he breathed.

An honest mistake.

"Hey!" Sawyer said. "Snap out of it. Your kids are right here." All five of Jack's kids peeked out behind him. "They were ruinin' my dinner."

Jack fell to his knees and spread out his arms as they came to hug him. It was actually a touching scene.

"Everyone, I'd like to make an announcement."  
The touching scene abruptly ended.  
"I come back to you a changed man," he said. "What the Others did for me," he paused. "I can't even begin to put into words. And I can't even begin to thank them. They've helped me see the light."

"Oh he's definitely been compromised," Sayid muttered to himself. "I'll go sharpen my knives."

"I come to you today, not as a doctor, but as a man of the arts. From here on out, I'm no longer Dr. Jack Jose Shephard. I'm _Playwright_ Jack Jose Shephard."

He let a huge, creepy smile spread on his face. "I write plays now!"

Waiting for applause that never came, he decided to go on.  
"If we can't live to enjoy plays together, we're gonna die alone."  
And now Charlie clapped.

"Another announcement!" Jack said. "I brought someone back with me. Come on out Alex!"

Alex, the only Other who was actually sort of sexy in her own crazy way, stepped out from behind the treeline and onto the beach. Her pants may have been extra tattered and cut off midcalf but they revealed toned, tan legs beneath them. And although her long brown hair was extra messy and had obviously never been brushed, there was something luscious about the tousled waves.

She noticed Kate first in the crowd and narrowing her eyes she whispered excitedly, crazily, sexily, "Hi Kate."

Instinctively, Kate folded her arms over her chest. 

"Most of you already know Alex," Jack said. "She's held guns to many of your heads in the past. Most recently your's, Hurley."

Alex waved at Hurley.

"But now she's put her gun-toting days behind her in order to become my new writing assistant. Actually, she will still, on occasion, carry a gun around for my protection. But her main duties as a writers assistant will be following me around and assisting me in whatever I should need during what we in the biz call the 'writing process.'"

"Is this your idea of getting back at the Others, Culo?" Ana asked. "That poor girl doesn't deserve this." Ana stepped up to her and looked her up and down. "You can stay with Libby and me if you want." And then she winked.

"Ahh yes," Jack said. "Ana Lucia. Alex, that's the ex-wife I was telling you about. The second one. I expect you to show her some respect, she's the mother of my children. Who, by-the-by, are standing right here in front of me."   
Alex kneeled down in front of Jack's kids and looked at them in awe. Her jaw dropped. "They're gorgeous," she whispered slowly.  
"I know," Jack also whispered, proudly.  
"The black one has your chin."  
"It's uncanny."

She stood and faced Jack now. "You must be so proud of how they turned out. I mean, raising kids in the jungle like this? Believe me, I know how hard it can be. Kidnapping them, injecting them with foreign experimental chemicals, feeding them. But these kids, they're all so beautiful. Look at the way that one's eating his brother's shirt. While he's still wearing it! Impressive." She caught her breath (she'd been holding it in awe all this time). I think you're incredible."

The way people were looking at Jack and Alex it was as if they were living in a glass box, like a strange new species of animal for people to be utterly bewildered by. The bizarre scene could've gone on like this all night but Sawyer was just too freaked out to let it.

"What the hell is going on here?" He asked. "Jack, you can't just kidnap barely legal girls to fulfil your every beck and call. It's admirable–" he accepted the slap in the arm from Kate, "–but I ain't buyin' it."

"Um, it's Jose," Alex said. "And he didn't kidnap me." Her eyes were wild yet eerily intently focused on Sawyer at the same time. "Tom says that being a writer's assistant will look great on a college application. You know, for when I get rescued."

"Right," Sawyer said. He stepped back, suddenly realizing that Alex was now about two inches away from his face and holding a pen and pad of paper the way most people hold kitchen knives when they hear an intruder in the house. "For when you get rescued."

"That's all for now!" Jack said. "You can all go. I have some writing to do."

The crowd started to disperse. Amazingly, Ana did not tackle him to the ground and drag him to her pit.  
Even though he'd clearly been compromised.

Clearly.

"Kate, wait!" Alex said. She reached for Kate's arm to stop her but instead her hand landed on Kate's right boob. That was just a mistake, though. Probably.

Alex took her hand back right away and Kate tried to act as if the girl didn't just grope her. "Yes Alex?"

Alex smiled and looked at Kate right in the eye. "Jose says you're going to have a baby. Is that true?"A tiny smile snuck its way onto Kate's face. She nodded. "It's true."  
"That's amazing," Alex said. She dropped to her knees until she was 'face to face,' so-to-speak, with Kate's stomach.

"I can't really tell," she said. "You don't look any different. I mean your boobs sort of feel bigger but I'd need more time with them to know for sure."

Kate stared down at the top of her head.  
"Sorry," Alex said, giggling slightly. She stood up. "You probably think I'm a little weird. It's just," she leaned in close and whispered, "I've never seen a pregnant woman before."

"Oh," Kate said. "Why didn't you just say– Wait a minute, you saw Claire pregnant."

"Yeah but she was so obviously pregnant. It looked like she had a basketball under her shirt. I mean, I've never seen a basketball before either but that's what I heard it's shaped like. Claire's pregnant belly. Anyway, I've never seen a woman look so skinny and still be pregnant.

Maybe it was the hormones, but Kate was suddenly touched by Alex's sentiment. And now she was literally being suddenly touched by Alex's hand on her stomach..

"Ohhhh," Alex whispered. "A bump."  
Kate smiled. "Yep."

"Can I babysit?"


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7: "Magic Circle"  
(What actors participate in before a show)**

It was that time of the week again; Just a day after Jack's return and Libby was already hosting another one of her therapy sessions. Starting as couples therapy, then morphing into parents therapy and now the all--encompassing family therapy, the sessions were a mainstay on the island even though it couldn't be said one way or the other whether the therapy worked.

But everyone trusted Libby. In a very moving letter she had written and then read to them awhile back, she assured them she was fully licenced and had never, ever been committed to a mental institution. She also proclaimed that the term 'crazy' was used too liberally in her profession and that the DSM IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th revision), a handy guide to mental disorders, was inaccurate at best, and absolute rubbish at worst. Especially when it came to diagnosing psychosis, schizophrenia, and bi-polar disorder - none of which Libby suffered from. She then turned away from them claiming there was something in her eye, and chuckled nervously while her right eye twitched uncontrollably. And that's how she became the resident island psychiatrist.

A rather large group of people sat in a circle on logs and their kids sat on the sand in front of them. Or at least most of the kids did.

Jack's five children were engaged in a whimsical game of tag, with Jacka Sayida and Josefina being the most aggressive. Hugo Jr, who had grown tired of the chase, had clamored inside the log to what he thought was safety. He promptly became stuck and fell asleep. Gunner noticed his rotund buttocks and soft hairy legs dangly out the end of the log and jumped up for a brief moment to pull the boy's pants down. Claire, with her hand gripped around little four year old Aaron's shoulder, looked on from across the fire, disapprovingly. She mentally shook her head.

It was Jin, Sun and Soon-Yi, Next to them sat Sawyer, Kate and Gunner, Next to Kate sat Jack, his writing assistant Alex and his five kids in front of them. Ana sat there too, begrudgingly, looking disinterested and annoyed. And next to her were Charlie, Claire and little 4 year-old Aaron.

Charlie of course, didn't father any of the children there but far be it from him to let that stop him from coming. In all this time he had never stopped insisting that he had a god-given obligation to act as Aaron's father.

Speaking of lesbians, Libby was there too of course, calmly sitting lotus-style on a log by the fire, her eyes glazed over as she tried to listen to the concerns of the Kwons.

"We have tried telling her that in the long run math is more important than contemporary American literature, as you all probable know," Sun told the group. "But she really loves books. There is this one book in particular by a man called Stephen King. She loves it so much we just can't pry it from her hands. What was the name of it?"

Jin looked down into his daughter's hands where the book was firmly clutched.  
"Gerald's Game."

If Sun and Jin had been able to pry the book from their daughter's hands, they would have known that _Gerald's Game_ was the story of a husband and wife who go up to their cabin to reinvigorate their sex life. The story also involves handcuffs, a fatal kick to the crotch, a deformed apparition, and a carcass-eating dog.

"Good book," Sawyer said.

The group sat silently, waiting for Libby to say something. She was a little busy trying to fight the fatigue she was experiencing since approximately 27 minutes ago when Sun had started talking about her daughter's study habits.

"Um." She shrugged. "Soon-Yi's smart."

And it seemed that was all Libby could think to say.

"Can we stop talking about Soon-Yi's math problems for once?" Claire asked. Unlike most of the parents there who seemed bored, Claire was exactly the opposite, sitting tensely, with one hand never leaving Aaron's shoulder.

"Aaron and I have bigger problems."

"Yes," Libby said, re-invigorated by the prospect of dealing with a case that had nothing to do with math and genius Asian children. "Have you made any progress in what we talked about last week?"

"I'm not gonna stop," Claire said.

"Claire, we've already discussed the pros and cons of this. Aaron is four years-old. He's much too old to continue breast feeding."

Claire glared at Libby. "I'm not, going to, stop," she repeated, more deliberately this time.

"Okay," Libby said, sighing. "What about the other thing we discussed? Are you finally convinced that Aaron is not sick?"

With so many kidnapping attempts Aaron experienced as a baby (The Others, Rousseau, Charlie) it was only natural that Claire had turned into a highly overprotective mother. And ever since he'd been born she was convinced that Aaron was sick. Sometimes it was rashes, other times it was colic. When he was quiet, Claire thought he was dying. When he was loud, well… she also thought he was dying. At the moment she was obsessed with the idea that he was having constant bouts of fever.  
"Would somebody just please feel his forehead!" she demanded.

Alex stretched her hand out to feel. "It's not particularly warm."

"That's not Aaron's forehead," Kate said.

Alex had 'accidently' reached out and squeezed Kate's right breast instead. Which was an odd thing to do considering Kate was sitting on the opposite side of Aaron.

"Nice huh?" Sawyer remarked.

Alex dramatically pulled her hand back as if she'd just touched a hot stove. Not that she knew what a stove was. She had heard stories.

Instead she went back to her pad of paper to scribble down some notes.

Then Charlie reached over to put the back of his hand against the boy's forehead but Claire immediately slapped it away. "Have you washed your hand?" she asked. "I know where your hands have been, Charlie. Your germs aren't going anywhere near my byebee!"

"She's barking mad, isn't she?" Charlie exclaimed. "She drove me to lesbianism, you know."  
"Oh, just because of my hallucinations?" she snapped. "You said you weren't going to mention those!"  
"I didn't!"

"What hallucinations?" Libby asked.

Claire took a deep breath and leaned in. "In my hallucinations," she said. "I think I see... dingos."

The group all looked at her for a minute.

"Well," Libby said. "On that note, Aaron, is there something you would like to say?"

The little boy that sat in between Charlie and Claire's knees looked just like his mother. He had fair skin and was skinny; short for a 4 year-old. He had very blonde hair, almost white blonde, and it was cropped short, near his scalp. His most distinctive features though, were his piercing big blue eyes, which were made even bigger by the thick, plastic-rimmed adult-sized glasses he wore. Though he probably didnt need them at first, now he unfortunately couldn't live without them.

By the same rule, if Claire could've found an inhaler on the island, he'd probably have asthma by now.

Even all these qualities should've made for an adorable little kid (maybe even as adorable as Gunner) if only he wasn't so serious. He seldom smiled. And he was always overshadowed by that ever-present hand on his shoulder courtesy of his mom. Plus there was the whole eating paste thing that was also off-putting.

"Well, Aaron?"

Taking his finger out of his nose, Aaron opened his mouth to speak, and in a mixed Australian and British accent (in his sheltered world he'd only really heard Claire's and Charlie's voices growing up), he calmly said, "Uncle Locke says you're all going to hell."

Everyone was silent. The Kwons gasped and Jin bent down to cover Soon-Yi's ears.

"Well," Libby said. "Looks like we made some progress with the Littletons today. Lets move on to someone else."

Libby was eyeing Sawyer Kate and inwardly, Sawyer groaned. He really hated therapy. But he especially hated the idea of his son going to therapy. But Kate had insisted and Libby _was_ licenced so, reluctantly, he agreed to bring him along to the family sessions.

"Sawyer, Kate and Gunner," Libby stated, "Problems? Questions? Comments? Prayers?"

"Well," Kate began, "I've been thinking about how Gunner will react once his brother or sister comes along. Sawyer and I are both only children so we don't know if he'll be jealous or confused... He's been looking at my stomach kind of funny lately."

"Funny?"  
"Like he thinks it's evil."  
"Evil?"

"When I woke up the other day, he had his head pressed against my torso and it sounded like he was whispering something in Latin."

"Gunner," Libby began, "Are you excited about getting a brother or sister?"  
The boy did not answer her.  
"He's just shy," Kate explained.  
He wasn't.

"Come on Gunner, you can tell me," Libby insisted. "Don't you want a brother or sister?"  
Finally he answered. "Yeah."

"See?" Libby said smiling. "You two have nothing to worry about."

And yet Sawyer and Kate suddenly looked very worried.

"He's lying," Sawyer stated.

They could always tell when he lied. Their inkling that maybe Gunner wasn't too happy about Bump was no longer just an inkling.

"Gunner lied to my son just this morning," Claire chimed in. "He told him the Others would kidnap me if he didn't let him play with his rape whistle."

Yes, Aaron had a rape whistle. It was for his protection.

"His very first con," Sawyer said in a hushed voice. He brought his hand to his suddenly glistening, proud eyes and then quickly explained that there was something in his eye.

"Sounds like you've got a lying problem," Libby told Gun in a sing-song voice, happy to be diagnosing problems. And apparently just as happy to let said problems cure themselves.

Gunner scowled and pouted. Looking behind his shoulder he could see his parents looking sad. He saw Soon-Yi's parents looking upset too. Everyone around him was making him mad. Naturally, he decided to take it out on Aaron.

"Aaron's a bastard!"

The Kwons gasped for the second time that night and Jin covered Soon-Yi's ears again.

Claire looked horrified as she picked Aaron up to hold him in her protective arms where apparently words couldn't touch him.

"Kate, I just told you last week that Gunner keeps cursing in front of Aaron."  
"I'm sorry, I–"  
"Nice kid you're raising."

Kate could only sit there, looking mortified, her hands fidgeting. She looked like she was trying to explain or at least defend her son while still trying to present herself in a positive light. Seeing her like this, all torn up and embarrassed, made Sawyer's heart break for her. And he wasn't just going to sit there and do nothing about it.

"Hey wait a minute!" he snapped. "Your kid just told us we're all going to hell and Kate's the bad mom!"  
"Sawyer–" Kate tried to stop him before he said something he shouldn't.

"Well it's true!" Claire exclaimed. "None of these kids are baptized!"

"Listen, Mommy Dearest," He stated. "Kate is 10 times the mother you'll ever be. And my boy may like to curse but at least he ain't a pansyass little wimp like yours! And you know what else is true? Aaron _is_ a bastard!"

"Are you getting all this?" Jack whispered to Alex at his side. The girl nodded, not once looking up from the pad of paper her face was buried into. She scribbled furiously, raising her eyes only to catch Kate's reaction. And Jack's. Jack was the main character here.

"I'm shocked," Jack whispered to Alex. "The accusations made against Kate are completely ludacris. I always thought Kate was a great mother."  
Alex mouthed the words 'great mother,' as she wrote.  
"I also feel superior, and kind of tingly...down there."  
She nodded and took it all down.

"Let's all calm down," Libby stated. "We're all done with the Austen-Fords, yes? Getting your feelings out in the open must've done some good."

"It didn't do sh–"

"The Cortez-Shephards!" She cut Sawyer off. "Since Jack's been gone for a while, why don't we let Ana Lucia share some of her parenting grievances with us."

She was always just there because she had to be but for the first time ever it looked like Ana would actually participate in the family sessions.

"Well, Libby. I wanna ask Jack if he's already forgotten that Alex is an Other. He's got an Other living with my kids!"

"So Alex is living with you, Jack?" Libby asked.

"When I accepted Alex as my writing assistant I agreed to provide her with room and board," he answered. "And it's Jose."

"That must be a little strange for your children. Spending time with a new woman in your life. I think what Ana is worried about is your chemistry together."

"That's not it at all," Ana said.

"Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Let him respond," Libby remarked.

"I agree, Libby. Chemistry's important," he said. "There are some people on this island, like Sawyer and Kate for example, who live together as lovers even though their chemistry's all wrong."

Kate and Sawyer both looked like they wanted to say something but Libby held her hand up and asked Jack to explain himself.

"They have more of a brother and sister type love. Totally wrong for a relationship. My chemistry with Kate on the other hand is much more conducive to an adult relationship. And everybody thinks so."

Now, why don't you just ask Alex how she feels about me?"  
"Alex?" Libby questioned.  
"I worship him."  
Jack smiled and bowed his head in modesty.  
"And that's exactly the type of respect needed for all relationships to work," he continued. "Not that Alex and I are in a relationship. It's just that if we were, we'd probably be perfect for each other. But we're not in a relationship."

"But she's still living with you," Libby stated.  
"Right."

"He's a hero," Alex marveled.

The session pretty much ended after that.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8: "Dry"  
(When cast members forget their lines and cannot continue they have 'dried')**

If his kids weren't staying with Ana Lucia that night Jack would currently be teaching them the Macarena (it was what he believed Latino people did all day). But as it was, he was doing something else.

The main reason Jack built his hut where it stood was because it provided a perfect view of Kate's hut. Yes, it was Kate _and Sawyer's_ hut but that was an insignificant little detail. Sawyer couldn't be there with her all the time. He often left to chop wood, or to just be ornery

Unfortunately for Jack, he had chosen to spy on Kate at a time when Sawyer _was_ there with her. Sometimes if Jack concentrated hard enough, he could will Sawyer out of his view, but he needed inspiration for his play. Kate and Sawyer's dysfunctional relationship was ideal for what he had in mind.

They were sitting on the airplane seats outside the hut and had probably just put Gunner to bed. Jack couldn't hear what they were talking about but he could read their body language. They were leaning towards each other and never once broke eye contact.

From this he surmised that they hated each other. 

"You getting anything?" He whispered.

Alex was there beside him, spying as well.  
"Yeah, I'm getting something." She tore the piece of paper from her notepad and showed it to Jack. It was a very life-like sketch of Kate as she talked to Sawyer. Only Sawyer wasn't included in the picture.

"Alex, this is amazing," Jack said. "From one Person of the Arts to another I can honestly say that you captured her perfectly. Every freckle's there, even my favorite, the barely visible one next to her–"  
"Right nostril," Alex finished for him. "It's my favorite too."

Jack smiled and he and Alex turned their attention back to Sawyer and Kate. Or more precisely, just Kate. 

"She's beautiful isn't she?"  
"Yeah, she is."  
"I'm gonna win her back," he stated.

Alex turned to look at him, her eyes wide. She actually looked kinda shocked. "There was a point when you had her?"  
Jack nodded. "When we crashed here my side was torn open. I needed stitches. Kate was the one to sew me back together."  
He pulled up his shirt to show Alex his old wound. A hideous jagged scar that spanned his entire back (even though the original wound was only a few inches long) peeked back at Alex from under Jack's shirt. It was also several shades of purple and pink.

Jack reminisced about that first Jate moment with nostalgia. It was the first time they spoke, the first time she touched him, the first time he bragged about being a doctor to her, and unbeknownst to Jack, it was also the very first time Kate had lied to him. Kate had never sewn anything in her life, and the drapes in her apartment were really Venetian blinds.  
(Kate wasn't very good at sewing things).

"Wow," she said. "What I wouldn't give to have Kate sew me up."

"Alex, I don't know what it is but I feel like we have so much in common."

They didnt. Alex was a hot Amazon-type young woman raised on a tropical island and Jack was a delusional, judgmental maniac in the midst of a midlife crisis. Oh, and he also had daddy issues.

Jack was mistaking this sense of commonality for the only thing they _did_ have in common; their mutual adoration for Kate. Not that Alex was a lesbian or anything. She just really liked Kate. A lot.

She was her girl crush.

If Jack and Alex had been able to hear the conversation that Sawyer and Kate were having, they would know that they were talking about the events of that night. Particularly, the events that took place at the group family therapy session.

"I can't believe you called Aaron a bastard," Kate said shaking her head. And incredulously she added, "and a pansyass little wimp! He's just a kid, Sawyer. He wears glasses for god's sake."

"Don't most pansyass little wimps?"

Kate ignored him, the events of the evening replaying over and over again in her head as she pondered all the ramifications.

"Claire will never talk to us again. And you know what that means: no hand-me-downs for Gunner."  
"Aaron should be getting Gun's hand-me-downs. That kid's a walking bone! Only paler."

"She got the one good suitcase full of kids clothes when we crashed. I was really close to convincing her to let us have whatever Aaron was done with."

"When we need the clothes, I can just con them off her. Easy job. She likes me."  
"You just had to loot dirty magazines, booze and cigarettes instead of grabbing kids suitcases, didn't you?"

"Well sorry Freckles, I really didn't know I'd be fathering any children during my stay on this island. And like you would've even given me the time of day if you saw me haulin' around a bag full of _Osh Kosh B'Gosh_.

Kate rolled her eyes and sat back in her chair, sighing. Sawyer sat back too, hoping that the senseless argument was over with. A moment later Kate brought her fingernails to her lips and began biting them, her hands trembling slightly. She had picked up this bad habit when she was anxiously awaiting Gunner's birth and now she did it every time she was nervous.

"And I'm a bad mother."

She also told the truth when she was nervous.

He looked at her sullen face, seeing a myriad of thoughts and feelings flashing across her features before she finally settled on melancholy.

"What are you talking about?" He said.

She shook her head, her expression telling him to forget about it but he couldn't do that. He reached over and effortlessly pulled her to where he sat, scooting over to make room for her.

"Claire's crazy. You gonna believe anything she says?"  
"She's right. I still don't know the right way to change a diaper. How are we going to do this again?"

It was unnerving to see his Kate, always so energetic and optimistic, reduced to this.

"It don't matter if you can't change a diaper. At least you try. You know, I heard Ana Lucia never once changed Josefina."  
"Really?"

"Yeah." He said, nodding. "And so what if Gun was naked for most of his life. And that he's starting to show a unique appreciation for fire. And that instead of just saying hi he'll sometimes tackle one of the other kids to the ground. Don't mean you're a bad mother."

Feeling her smile against him, Sawyer squeezed her tighter in his arms. 

While Sawyer and Kate spent the evening sitting outside their hut, the recently busy area in front of Jack's hut was now vacant. It seemed Jack and Alex had retired for the night.

As Sayid passed by Jack's hut he could hear wet, smacking noises and the sounds of unrestrained, effeminate moans speaking the name, "Kate."  
Definitely Jack.

Sayid tried to quickly get away before being lamentably privvy to any more strange noises but a new sound stopped him in his tracks. A second voice, a female one. This one calling out, "Kate," as well.  
Definitely Alex?

Sayid shook his head and resumed his quick pace.

"Definitely compromised," he said to himself.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9: "Prompt"  
The person who, during the performance, feeds actors lines if they 'dry'. Usually from the down stage stage left position**

With a towel and a bottle of shampoo in one hand, and holding Gunner's hand with the other, Sawyer walked down the beach until he and his son were close enough to the water.

Wanting to give Kate some time off, he decided to be the one to give Gunner his bath this time. But not in the hatch or the caves ("freshwater baths are for wusses," he'd told his son).

He helped Gunner out of his t-shirt and let him take off his own pants while he did the same. Once Sawyer was down to his boxers and Gunner was down to his birthday suit, they went into the ocean.

Sawyer sat close to the shore but far enough so that the water reached Gunner's stomach.

Standing in between his father's legs, the boy filled up his only bath toy; half a hollowed coconut, and proceeded to pour the water over Sawyer's head.

Sawyer chuckled as the water came down his face. Truth was he loved giving Gunner his bath. As much as he wanted to let Kate relax for a bit, he also savored this time with his son. Being in the water with him, just playing around, it was freeing.  
One day he would teach him to swim. 

Sawyer squeezed some shampoo onto his palm and then tossed the bottle to shore.

"You know your momma doesn't like it when you curse."  
He started running his hands through the boy's hair, massaging the shampoo in. "She doesn't like it when you lie either."

"Do you like it?" The boy filled his coconut and watched the water pour out.

Sawyer laughed. "It don't matter what I like, boy. Don't you wanna make your momma happy?"  
Gunner nodded.

"Well then, you gotta be a good boy. You can't go around calling kids bastards anymore. At least not in front of other people. And you can't tell lies either. You gotta make your mother look like the best mother on this island."

"She is!" Gunner exclaimed. "She's the best mommy!"

Sawyer smiled. "Yeah, she is," he agreed. 

Gunner took some of the shampoo lather from his own head and applied it to Sawyer's stubble, placing his hands on his father's cheeks. "I washing you too," he said, excitedly.  
His son's smile always caused a mutual effect for Sawyer. "Thanks, Gun!"

Out of the corner of his eye Sawyer could see Jin and Soon-Yi coming down to the beach, carrying some fishing tools. They stopped at the rocks, not too far from where Sawyer and Gunner were bathing.

"Out of all the damn spots on the beach," Sawyer muttered. He caught Jin's eye and offered up a wave. "Take your daughter to work day, Teriyaki?"

Jin didn't seem to understand, but he waved back anyway.

"Hi Soony!" Gunner shouted. The girl saw him and waved too.

"Ohh," Sawyer drawled, smirking knowingly. "I see what's going on here. You got a thing for Soon-Yi, huh?"  
"I gotta what?"  
"You like her! You think she's pretty."  
"I think Mommy pretty."

"Yes, Gun, mommy's very pretty. But you can't live your whole life comparin' the girls you meet to your mother. No girl likes a momma's boy."  
"Nope," Gunner agreed, distracted by his toy.

"But good pick, son. Not that you had much of a choice." He shivered at thought of Gunner liking Josefina. "Bet Soon-Yi'll grow up to be really hot."  
"Soony cold?"  
Sawyer laughed and picked up the boy's arms, tickling his armpits with his shampoo-lathered fingers. "It's just an expression, Gun."

Gunner, being a 3 year-old and all, didnt exactly comprehend all that Sawyer was saying, but he still liked being an active listener. He continued scrubbing Sawyer's stubble, smooshing up his cheeks.

"Just remember, never let her try to convince you that lit matches are good for foreplay"  
"Okay."

From not too far away Gunner and Sawyer heard a familiar nasally British voice.

Following Gunner's gaze, Sawyer could see Charlie wading through the water, going from one spot to the next. He wasn't swimming, that was for sure, but he kept looking down and dunking himself in.

Then Sawyer noticed that Aaron was there too, up to his knees in water. He was wearing nothing but his underwear, his glasses, and his rape whistle.  
"Of all the damn places on this island they gotta–"

"Oi! Sawyer!" Charlie shouted. He hurriedly went to take Aaron's hand and brought him along to where Sawyer and Gunner were.

"Hey Charlie," Sawyer said, feigning interest. "Givin' Aaron a bath too?"

"Right! A bath! That's what we're doing." Charlie had this curious expression on his face. It was something like relief that he didn't have to think up a lie to tell. "Aaron and I were walking down the beach- I mean, we were already in the water, _bathing_, when he spotted something floating around."

Sawyer should've been skeptical. Ever since Aaron was born, Charlie's reasons for bringing him to the water were highly suspect.

"Did you happen to see anything in this part of the water?" Charlie asked Sawyer. "Anything painted mostly blue? Made of plaster? Shaped like a virgin mary statue?"

And now Sawyer started getting skeptical.

"You did tell Claire you were taking Aaron for a bath, right?"

"No, Claire's napping. Don't worry, we'll be back before she wakes up."

"Charlie, you idiot! She's gonna wake up screaming for that kid."

He didn't seem to hear. "I think I see something over there! You watch Aaron."

Before Sawyer could protest, Charlie was bounding through the water, leaving poor little Aaron with Sawyer and Gunner. The same two people who'd called him a bastard and a pansyass little wimp the night before. Understandably, he looked scared. 

Sawyer sighed, knowing what he had to do. "Listen Aaron, I'm sorry for calling you a wimp last night. You're not a wimp. You're looking pretty sharp in the water like this without your mom's hand on your shoulder. Hell, maybe you'll even get a tan."

The boy simply looked at him through the droplets of water on his glasses.

"Gunner wants to apologize for calling you a bad name too."  
He nodded at Gunner and watched as he faced the other boy.  
"Sorry," he muttered.

"Great," Sawyer said. "Now we can all be friends again."  
Aaron looked from Sawyer to Gunner. And after a minute of just staring at the two he picked up his rape whistle and blew on it with as much lung capacity as he had.

For a moment after he blew there was a deafening quiet. Everything was still. Sawyer knew it was only the calm before the storm.

"Oh fu–"

"SOMEBODY TOOK MY BYEBEEEEEEEEEE"

As Claire's voice pierced through the air something like pandemonium erupted on the beach.

Claire ran out of her hut, screaming, crying, falling to her knees in anguish. Jack leapt out of his hut, blindly swinging his semiautomatic around. Alex ran out of the hut right after him, her hair, incidently, was slightly more disheveled than it had been earlier. Locke was out of his hut too, cracking the bones in his neck and rolling up his short sleeve as his hand made a tight fist. 

Charlie's head bobbed out of the water, oblivious and annoying. "Nothing over he–"

"Take him!" Sawyer shouted.

Realizing what was happening, Charlie took Aaron and began carrying him back to shore trying to think up a believable explanation before he had to deliver it to everyone else. As he passed him Sawyer could hear him mumbling something about how Jesus made him do it.  
Seemed he never learned his lesson.

Sawyer took Guuner's coconut husk and filled it up. Using his hand as a sort of damn at the top of the boy's forehead, he poured the water over his hair, washing away the shampoo and making sure it didn't get into his eyes.

"Bath time's over," Sawyer told him. 

They hurried out of the water and reached the beach just as Locke's knuckles collided with Charlie's chin.

Sawyer left Gunner dripping on the sand so he could go get the towel and discarded clothes he'd left a few feet away.

Gunner wasn't standing too far away from where Jin and Soon-Yi were. They were both sitting on the ground where Jin was teaching his daughter the proper way to tie together a net.

When Gunner saw Jin holding two ends of a rope he was automatically reminded of a time not too long ago when Kate tried to teach him how tie shoelaces. He didn't have any shoelaces but she still wanted to teach him using her own. It was one of Kate's better moments as a mom.  
He remembered a rhyme she'd told him to help him tie knots.  
He remembered bunny jumps over and bunny runs under.

It looked like Soon-Yi could use some help too.

"It's about bunnies!" He shouted. 

Soon-Yi looked up. All she could see was Gunner in all his glory.

It was all Jin could see too. He promptly shielded Soon-Yi's view with his hand and muttered something about NakedWhiteTrashBaby.

She would not be ogling any naked boys on his watch.

Sawyer was there soon enough to wrap Gunner in the towel and throw him over his shoulder like a rolled-up carpet. He walked away, and Gunner, bouncing on Sawyer's shoulder, looked back at Soon-Yi from under the towel flapping over his eyes.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10: Casting Call.  
(It's where people audition and stuff)**

Sawyer couldn't know what time it was but he did know it was an ungodly hour for him to be awake. Gunner wasn't even up yet and he was usually the one to wake everyone else.

The incessant pounding on the door continued, loud and obnoxious. Sawyer could count four pairs of hands banging but he didn't care if it was a thousand. He buried his head under his Oceanic Airlines pillow, determined not to wake up.

"HELLO," someone shouted from outside. "WAKE UP! OPEN THE DOOR!"

The voice filtered through the cotton in his pillow but even though it was muffled he still recognized it. 

From his other side he could hear Kate groan in annoyance only a second before he could feel her foot digging into him and shoving him out of the bed.

He knew how to read these gestures well by now.

She'd grown accustomed to shoving him out of bed whenever she was too tired/lazy to get up and tend to something.

It all started right after Gunner was born when he'd start crying in the middle of the night and she'd shove Sawyer out of bed when she meant say, "Pick him up," or "you change him" or "feed him."

And when he asked how exactly he was supposed to feed him, considering he didn't have those specific womanly parts required, she would answer by throwing a pillow at him. Hard.

This time, judging by the force of the shove and the accompanying groan he knew that what she meant was, "GO OPEN THE _FREAKING_ DOOR."

He was laying on sand now and he was wide awake. He could see Kate roll over on the mattress he had stolen from the top bunk in the hatch. She was already back to sleep.  
The banging continued.

Picking himself up, he went to the door and swung it open.

"Somebody better be dead or dyin'," he warned in a low husky voice, weighed down with sleep.

The grey of dawn cast shadows over the faces of the four children standing at Sawyer's door. Jack's quadruplets, as annoying as ever, suddenly transformed themselves from an angry mob into smiling little darlings. Sawyer still saw the angry mob.  
Josefina, the one who had demanded the door be opened, leaned to the side and peered behind Sawyer to see Kate's sleeping figure. It was exactly what Jack always did every time he came to Sawyer's hut before she'd woken up.  
Sawyer couldn't believe it.

"What do _want_!" he hissed, making sure not to raise his voice for the sake of Gunner and Kate. "And I don't want _you_ to tell me," he said, pointing an accusing finger at Josefina. "You still haven't learned what an 'indoor voice' is."

Jack Hugo handed him a sheet of paper as Jack Juan Locke said, "Our father. Want you to come to a. Open casting call."

Sawyer grabbed the piece of paper and looked at it. It read,

"_OPEN CASTING CALL FOR JOSE'S PLAY  
Bring your talent, people. I only want the best.  
3 p.m. next to my hut._

Write out a Resume of all your previous acting experience if you have any. And don't bother auditioning if you don't. Unless you're Kate. If you're Kate then you can audition as much as you want, baby.

And bring headshots!"  
It was hand-written, and Sawyer could see that the rest of the sheets in Jack Hugo's hands were too. 

"Don't ever wake me up again."

With that he shut the door in the quad's faces. 

Claire was hyperventilating. Then she was crying. Then she was screeching.

"SOMEBODY TOOK MY BYEBEEEEEEE."

And after screeching some more, she abruptly stopped, wiped her eyes dry, and smiled.

"Ok, that was great Claire," Jack said. "But the line is actually, 'Thank you for saving me from that pervert. I think I may be, just may be, falling in love with you, Jose.'"

Although Claire was enthusiastic and eager to be in the play, by the way Jack whispered in Alex's ear and by the way Alex crossed something off her notepad, it didn't look like she'd nailed the part.  
The auditions had started a half hour ago when Jack stepped out of his hut.  
He had looked up at the bright blue sky, his hand shading the simmering sun from his eyes. He sighed deeply, taking in the fresh beach air. There was no breeze and it was hot as hell. The perfect conditions for casting. Performances were always more intense when the actors were perspiring heavily, especially around the face area. Beads of sweat dripping from one's forehead was gold. Maybe the heat would cause some to scream out their lines. That would be fantastic, he mused.

He had found a good spot a few feet away from his doorway, and drove a large wooden placard down into ground. It read **REDNECK SUSHI AUDITIONS – LINE STARTS HERE** in thick, chunky brown letters.

"Looks good," Alex exclaimed.  
Jack sniffed the sign. "Would've been better if we had some ink, but oh well."

"Should've used markers, jackass!" Sawyer said. He was there at 3 pm sharp because Kate had dragged him along.  
Alex and Jack had searched the hatch for hours, looking for something suitable to write on wood but they had come up short. Originally, there were several boxes of markers in the hatch, but they had disappeared mysteriously long ago. Curiously, Sawyer's pockets were bulging.

Jack and Alex had used up all the ink in their pens hand-writing every page of the numerous scripts. They had spent the time sharing stories with each other. (Jack shared stories and fantasies about Kate while Alex shared stories and fantasies about Kate's boobs.

Anyway, there was a large crowd of people outside Jack's hut, waiting for the auditions to begin. While Jack took this as a sign of his popularity as an Artist, a community leader, and just an all-around popular hunk, it was actually more an indicator of the level of boredom on the island. This was basically the only game in town. He turned and saw everyone gasp and stare at him in awe. They obviously respected and admired him greatly.

In actuality, they were taking in his appearance.  
Gone was the sweaty, sleeveless tshirt-wearing, backpack-carrying, crying, action-figure of superhero doctor Jack Shepard. Atop his head laid a red beret that he'd found in Sayid's luggage with the badge torn off (he thought it best not to affiliate himself with the Republican Guard).   
His eyes peered behind square-framed glasses with the lenses popped out (he didn't want to ruin his perfect vision).  
A faint mustache decorated his previously thin upper lip. Or maybe it was just a smudge. (No one wanted to get close enough to check it).   
And beneath his pursed lips, a dark, pointy soul patch darted out towards the crowd. A long sleeve, tight-fitting black shirt covered his torso, one of his nipples poking out from a hole on one side as if to say hello. Amazingly he had even found a pair of white sailor pants to complete his new persona.

What stood before them was a man transformed, forged from the flame of creativity and the clothes from the plane that no one else on the island had wanted.

At the moment he sat alongside Alex on chairs brought up from the hatch. Before them was the ping pong table- also borrowed from the hatch- bearing a messy display of dozens of blank sheets of paper strewn about and just a few resumes. Charlie's, at the top of the bunch, was simply one of the many DriveShaft albums he'd packed in his luggage.

"Next!"

John Locke walked into the space designated the 'stage' and rubbed his palm over his bald scalp contemplatively. "She aint gonna be. Your damn muse so long. As my name is James Fordham, Jackass," he said.

It wasnt a bad audition at all until he added, "And we all know it!"

"Right ok, no adding anything extra to my lines," Jack said. "The words on those pages you hold in your hand- that script- are genius. Any additions are just poor flickers of a dying flame in comparison. I know I what I'm doing, John."

Locke walked off the stage, passing Sayid who was on the way up. Sayid, the most apathetic of the survivors (aside for Ana Lucia), may have surprised everyone by auditioning for Jack's play. But he was about to surprise them even more with his impeccable line-reading.

"Before I start I would just like to say that although James Fordham, the character I am auditioning for, is clearly a cliche of a one-dimensional villain made to look dumber by his redneck accent, I can still see some glimmer of hope in bringing life to him."

And then he cleared his throat and began.

"I may be a redneck, Sunburn, but I got a whole world of knowledge to show you in the back of this here restaurant. And by a whole world of knowledge I mean a whole lotta ass-grabbin'."

('Sunburn' was Jack's poor substitute for 'Freckles' but incredibly Sayid made it work).

His hands came to rest at his sides and he stared at Alex and Jack waiting for his critique.

Jack sat back in his chair and blew some air out of his pursed lips as he looked over some of the papers in front him. He picked up Sayid's resume and leafed through it. "You're from," he paused, scanning Sayid's resume with his eyes, "Iraq, is that right?"

"Yes, that is correct."  
"Uh huh, so that makes you, what, Indian?"  
Sayid looked at Jack sternly. "I am Iraqi."

"Okay, okay, that's really great for you," Jack condescended. "I'm just gonna lay it straight. When I wrote the part of James Fordham I didn't have an Indian in mind."  
"I am Iraqi!" Sayid shouted. "I studied abroad at Juilliard receiving a Masters in theater! I have done Shakespere in the most prestigious theater in the middle east! My southern accent is unmatched!"

Jack smiled an cocked his head towards Alex. "I'm gonna need you to escort him off the stage," he said. "I've been to Phuket. I know an Inadian when I see one." 

Although the sight of the soldier being escorted away by the waif should've elicited at least a snicker from Sawyer, he was too busy being painfully bored to even notice. He would have rather been chopping wood.  
Or sleeping.  
Or clawing his eyes out.  
Anything else.

To pass the time he had taken Kate's script and skimmed through the pages to see what exactly she was auditioning for.

The play's synopsis, went a little something like this:

An accomplished and revered Latino doctor from the big city, Jose Manuel Luis Fernando Guadalupe Eduardo Christina Arturo Stuart Diego Montoya Shepardo gives up his material life to become an artist in the heartland of America. As with all tormented and complex starving artists, he moonlights as a dishwasher at Redneck Sushi, a Japanese restaurant in Kansas. He hates his bully of a redneck boss, James Fordham, and is moments from quitting one day when a beautiful woman, Kay Austen, shows up at the restaurant and applies to be a waitress. She is hired on the spot by the boss, who begins to sexually harass her whenever the opportunity arises.

Jose decides to stay to protect her from James and to use Kay as his muse. Kay is actually an escaped fugitive, and the fear and loneliness that comes with her pitiful and shameful existence takes a toll on her psyche, leading to an affair with their pervert of a boss. Kay actually finds Jose much more attractive, but with him being a former-doctor and present-artist/dishwasher, he is woefully out of her league and she has to settle for James.  
Kay helps Jose with his art and they form a close, platonic bond. Thanks to Kay, Jose's art takes off and becomes the talk of the town in Kansas. He proclaims his love for Kay and asks her to leave Redneck Sushi with him, forever. Kay cannot, and confesses that she is really an escaped fugitive and that James knows - he is blackmailing her into staying with him. Horrified by this villainy, Jose pledges to save Kay from the evil James and live happily ever after in a big house with a white-picket fence, a german shepard, 5 kids, and a mini-van.

Also, at one point in the play Jose saves a bunch of people from food poisoning or something.

Sawyer watched Gunner running around with Soon-Yi and Jack Eko and wished he was having as much fun as his son seemed to be having.  
Kate brought him out of his reverie.   
"Do you think I should say my lines in a British accent?"

Sawyer turned to look at Kate. "The play's called Redneck Sushi, Freckles."  
"I know but I think Kay would have a British accent. She seems dignified."

Kate was auditioning for the waitress's role and no, she did not seem dignified.

"Can you even do a British accent?"

"Thee rine in Spine fawlls minely on the pline."

No. The answer was she couldn't.

As Sawyer just stood there, staring at Kate- and only staring because he knew insulting her awful British accent would result in an onslaught of hormonal tears- Charlie turned around from his place ahead of them on line.

"You think Kay would have a British accent?" he asked, delighted. "Fantastic! I'm auditioning for the Kay Austen part as well."

Kate smiled at him but her eyes betrayed her seemingly cunning thoughts . "Good luck, Charlie."

It was only when he turned back around that she muttered to Sawyer, "There is no way he is going to get that part. I have a much better accent."

Jack called Charlie up to audition.

And now Sawyer _had_ to say something. "Of course you're getting the part! You're auditioning for a character named Kay Austen! Your name is Kate Austen!"

She stared at him blankly.

"The play's about you! It's about us! Jack's in love with you!"

Charlie's audition could be heard as Kate contemplated this.

"You're so hot, Jose," Charlie said. "I didn't know any hot former-doctors-turned-artists lived in this part of Kansas. I think I may be, just may be, falling in love with you. More."

"Just because our names are similar doesn't mean that Jack's still in love with me and that he wants to have 5 kids with me and a house and an SUV and a german shepard." 

Before she knew it Kate was called up to audition as a now crying Charlie walked off the stage. Standing a few feet away from Jack and Alex, she looked at the script briefly and coughed, readying her throat for the line reading.

Jack stopped her before she started. "Can you please read from Act 2, scene 1, let's say... line 13?"

Kate found the line. "Wow Jose. A hairy chest is really hot. And not gross at all."

It was like his dreams were coming to life.

"Yougotthepart!" The words exploded out of his mouth and he could not hide the glee on his face as he stood up to clap.

"You've got the part!" Jack exclaimed as he ran over to Kate, giggling uncontrolably. Alex ran up after him, wasting no time in ripping up a piece of paper into tiny shreds and throwing them over Kate's head."Great audition!" She said. "You're such an amazing actress."  
"But I didnt even get a chance to–"  
"You were perfect. Exactly as I imagined you for the role," Jack said. "So, is Sawyer next?"

"I ain't auditioning, Jackass," Sawyer said, walking up to them. And despite being totally against this play, he still turned to Kate and said, "congratulations" after kissing her on the cheek.

"But I wrote the part with you in mind," Jack said.  
"Oh yeah? You see me as the sexually harassing hick pervert, do you?"  
"Yeah."  
Sawyer frowned. "Yeah, I guess I could see that."

"Listen, I know you'll probably be really bad at this," Jack began, placing his hand on Sawyer's shoulder and looking him in the eye. "But you're bad at a lot of things. I still want you to audition."

Sawyer slapped Jack's hand off his shoulder. "Ain't gonna happen, Tennessee Williams."  
"_Who_?" Jack asked.

Sawyer took hold of Kate's hand and called out, "Come on Gunner, we're leaving!"

A bead of sweat suddenly formed at the top of Jack's brow as he watched Sawyer and Kate walk away- and it wasn't from the heat. He was suddenly very nervous. He decided this was the best time to announce something to the crowd that he had been keeping from them. Also, their interest as a whole was dwindling and he liked to keep things going with announcements.

"I have an announcement to make!" He announced.  
Everyone stopped to look at him, including Sawyer and Kate.

"If Sawyer doesn't do this play," Jack said, pausing here for effect, "the Others will kill us all!"  
That seemed to get their attention. And realizing how important that made Sawyer sound, Jack quickly added, "They threatened to kill me too!"


	11. Chapter 11

I was challenged over at lost-forum to includethe character of Aunt Meg into my story. I think most skaters out there have read Leah Kate's **In Hiding **and **On The Road **so you should all know who Aunt Meg is. And those of you who havent read IH/OTR, it's ok, she's basically independent of those stories- she's like a new character to this one. So, with Leah Kate's permission, I give you my own version of Aunt Meg.

**Chapter 11: Plot Hole  
(Any unexplained inconsistency in a story)**

Of all the small, essential chores Sawyer and Kate had to do to maintain a semi-normal lifestyle, taking out the garbage was Sawyer's least favorite. Since the island didn't have a dump, all of the castaways took to burning their trash after learning the hard way that burying it caused disastrous results. No one would forget those harrowing three days years ago when boars took over the beach, turning it upside down trying to unearth the buried waste. No one would forget because the "Rise of The Boars" was annually celebrated as a holiday by boar-loving John Locke.

Although Sawyer didn't like doing this chore, he learned the hard way that leaving the burning up to Kate wasn't an option. No one would forget the day Kate went out to burn the trash and "accidentally" started a forest fire that lasted 17 hours. No one would forget because the "Day of Burning" was annually celebrated as a holiday by Charlie. No one knew why he celebrated it, though some suspected he was just trying to be cool.

Taking two steps out of his hut, Sawyer stopped in his tracks when Jack suddenly stepped in front of him from out of nowhere.

"Tell me why you won't do my play," he demanded.  
Sawyer obliged, and responding honestly he said, "Because I read your script."

Jack considered this. His enormous ego refused to accept this as an answer. "Tell me why you won't do my play, RIGHT NOW!" By the threatening tone in his voice he may as well have been holding a gun to Sawyer's head.  
"Your screaming might work on Freckles but it don't faze me, Jackass."  
"Oh yeah?"

Jack grabbed the bag of garbage out of Sawyer's hand and flung it into the nearby flames of a dying campfire. "And now? How do you feel about the contents of that bag going up in flames?"

Sawyer smirked. "I feel just dandy, Doc." He decided to have a little fun with Jack while he was there. "You just torched a gen-u-ine copy of _Redneck Sushi_."

Jack was in the flames in an instant, having lunged for the just-discarded bag as if he was impervious to fire. He quickly realized he was _not_, however, when he felt his arms being singed as he tried to pick up the bag. Doing whatever was needed to save his script though, he merely resorted to stomping out the fire with his shoes until the bag broke and his feet were covered in a melted mush of Kate's leftover cooking experiments.

"This is garbage!" Jack yelled, disgusted.  
"Warned ya."

Watching Jack's face contort into a sort of grimace veiled by a clenched jaw and a stiff upper lip, Sawyer couldn't be sure if the man was in pain or if he was simply about to cry. It was probably a mixture of both.

"ALEX!" Jack shrieked.

Although he hadn't seen her at all, Sawyer should've known that Alex was near by. She was never too far from her mentor.

Looking around, he finally noticed her leave her position peering inside his hut's window, and running towards the ocean. She was back a few seconds later splashing handfuls of water onto Jack's hands. Alex repeated this until Jack relieved her of the task. She promptly returned to her spot outside the window, spying on Kate.

Dripping now, Jack was a able to disguise the tears on his face with his wet exterior. Although the whimpering didn't help. Jack placed his hands on his hips, shook his bent head in disbelief and paced. "Arent you afraid that the Others will kill us all if you don't do my play?" he asked.

"As believable as that sounds, no."

Jack stopped and nodded. Something about his expression made Sawyer feel as if maybe Jack was finally going to give up.  
He wasn't.

"You leave me no choice," Jack said in a low and steady voice. "If you won't listen to me then maybe you'll listen to that bossy, know-it-all crazy old lady from down the beach."

"Rose?"

"No," Jack responded. "Your own family."

Sawyer had a sneaking suspicion where this was going and he didn't like it one bit. In a low and steady voice of his own he said, "The only family I got is in that hut, and you know it, Jackass."

From somewhere in the shadows the stern voice of a bossy, know-it-all old lady could be heard saying, "Now that's just rude, James."

Stepping into the moonlight, she fixed Sawyer with a completely unwarranted scowl.

Jack smiled. By way of introduction he said, "Sawyer, you know your aunt Meg."  
Aunt Meg was not Sawyer's aunt and everyone besides aunt Meg knew this.

Meg Ford was simply one of the more reclusive survivors of flight 815 who, after discovering a year ago that Sawyer shared her last name, convinced herself that she was related to him.

Ironically enough, when they first crashed on the island and Sawyer began presenting himself as the asshole who liked to steal off the dead, aunt Meg could occasionally be heard spewing such memorable gems as "Someone needs to kick that redneck in the teeth" or the inexplicable "I'm glad I'm not related to that asshole."

But now she was certain that Sawyer was her long lost nephew.

And no one could convince Meg Ford otherwise. She was a stern, no-nonsense, tough-as-nails gray-haired old woman who wouldn't put up with anyone's bullcrap. Also, she was crazy as hell.

Sawyer, fortunately, had managed to avoid aunt Meg most the time, which really wasn't all that hard since she preferred to spend her days inside her own hut with all of 27 cats. And since there were no cats on tropical islands, they were actually salamanders. But nobody told her that.  
Jack watched the two of them stare icily at each other, Sawyer obviously bothered to have to deal with the crazy old lady, and aunt Meg obviously bothered that she was related to this pighead.

"You know," Jack said, stroking his prickly soul patch, "this is a great idea for my play. Why don't I just randomly insert a new character into _Redneck Sushi_ and make the audience believe they were there all along? That's sure to work! And it wouldn't confuse the audience at all... it's genius!"

Satisfied with his own unbelievable creativity and the breeze coming through the hole in his shirt providing his bare nipple a renewed breath of fresh air, Jack summoned Alex to his side so they could get going.

"Dude, that's like Dawn on Buffy."

Not surprisingly, Hurley had suddenly appeared to share his useless knowledge of all things pop culture with no one who cared.

Jack inhaled deeply and rolled his eyes, the small gesture letting Hurley know he was too important to listen to anything he had to say. "Hurley, I don't speak Klingon."

"You know. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The TV show... about the... vampire slayer? They gave Buffy a teenage sister in season 5, episode one."

"Have you ever heard of that television show?" Jack asked Alex who was now standing at his side.  
"What's a television?" she asked.  
"I rest my case."  
Hurley shook his head and was soon on his way, just as Jack and Alex were leaving too.

"Are we going to edit the script, Jose?" Alex asked, excited.  
"Yes," Jack said. "Edit." When he said this he winked. He also formed air quotes with his fingers.

As Jack and Alex walked off to "edit," Kate, having just put Gunner to bed, walked out of the hut to see what was keeping Sawyer.

"Oh," she said, surprised to see the crazy old lady from down the beach who thought she was Sawyer's aunt. The only instance Kate knew of when aunt Meg left her hut for something other than the bare necessities was that one time Locke decided to walk around the beach naked. Meg had pulled up a chair that day and decided to just... watch. Ironically enough that was the day everyone else on the beach decided to stay in.

"Oh my god, is Locke naked again?" Kate asked, quickly covering her eyes with her hand lest a naked Locke suddenly sneaked up on her. Again. 

"Relax, Meg was just visiting," Sawyer said. "And now she was just leaving."

Kate didn't mind Meg as much as Sawyer did. She liked the idea of more family around, even if it was all a lie. But then again she also liked lies so it all worked out. She brought her hand down and smiled. "Hi Meg."

Meg's shifty-eyed, skeptical expression made Kate feel like maybe she didnt leave such a lasting impression the last time she saw her. "It's me, Kate."

"Kate. You look more like a _Sally_ to me," aunt Meg said knowingly.  
A moment of uncomfortable silence elapsed between them as Kate tried to think of something to say. The best she could come up with was a feeble "Sally's a beautiful name."

Meg walked over to Kate and leaned in until her nose was nearly touching hers. "At least that's what the FBI seems to think," she eerily whispered.

It was while Kate thought about whether or not the FBI really did think she looked more like a Sally that aunt Meg grabbed her chin, examining her face. "At least you got yourself a pretty one," she told Sawyer.

Sawyer could only stand there, dumbfounded. "Why are you acting like this, Meg? You've already met Kate. Me and her been together almost 4 years now."

"Did you want me to throw you a parade?" She deadpanned. "Your uncle John and I were together for 35 years before he died in that car accident back in '87."  
"The only uncle I ever had died of a brain tumor."  
"Did I say car accident?" aunt Meg asked. "Because I'm sure I said brain tumor. You should clean out those ears, James."

As aunt Meg stared at Sawyer, Kate tried to ever so politely unclench the woman's fingers from her face. She felt it was important to be polite to the closest thing she'd ever have to a mother-in-law.  
"Aunt Meg, would you like to come in for some mango juice or beer?" Those were only two drinks in the Austen-Ford household.

"No way!" Sawyer snapped. "If she comes in we'll never get her to leave!"  
"Sawyer!" Kate said. Even she was surprised by how rude he could be sometimes.  
"Listen, lady," Sawyer went on, "we'd really love to stand out here all night and have ourselves a little family reunion but--"

"_Sawyer_," aunt Meg said as if trying the name out on her tongue for the first time. She looked as if 'Sawyer' left a bad taste in her mouth. "You're still going by that name? You know what a Sawyer is? It's someone who saws people in half. That's what you want to be known as?"

Sawyer bowed his head in exasperation. "Can I just go now, please?"

"I gotta hand it to you for putting up with him," Meg said, turning to Kate. "I could let the tweedle dumb accent and the David Spade haircut slide but I draw the line at a man who listens to Barry Manilow."

"I do not listen to Barry Manilow!" Sawyer retorted. He was all the madder because Kate was laughing at this revelation as if she believed it. As if this crazy Meg Ford lady could possibly know that he used to listen to 'Mandy' over and over again back in the 80s trying to get over a girl by the same name who'd dumped him.

Not that that ever happened.

"I never listened to 'Mandy'!" He said unconvincingly. Of its own accord, his voice cracked on 'Mandy.'

Kate was happy to be sharing a laugh with aunt Meg until she saw the intimidating older woman's smile suddenly fade away. She looked at Kate as if anew, taking a step back and then a step forward to get a better view. "Lift up your shirt."

"What?"

Meg, apparently upset that Kate couldn't follow simple directions, lifted her shirt for her. She poked her stomach. Than she slapped it. Then she whispered something unintelligible to it. Letting Kate's shirt fall back down, aunt Meg turned to Sawyer with an accusing glare.

"You son of a bitch."

"_Excuse me?_" Sawyer said.  
"You went and knocked her up."

"Is that your way of sayin' congratulations?"

"See what I did there?" aunt Meg said, turning back to Kate. "It's a gift I've always had. 'The darndest thing. Any time a woman's pregnant I just know. I'm a Ford family legacy."

"_Oh please_," Sawyer scoffed. "Anyone can tell she's pregnant. Look at 'er, she's showin.'"  
"Sawyer!" Kate said, surprised by how insensitive he could be sometimes. As much as she tried to fight them, tears sprung to the corners of her eyes.

"Baby, don't cry," Sawyer said as he mentally kicked himself for calling her what must have been the equivalent of fat in her mind. Normally Kate wouldn't cry over petty things like that but then again, normally Kate wasn't pregnant and hormonal.

"Great going dipsht, you got the woman carrying your child to cry. I'm assuming it is his child," she added.  
Kate nodded, wiping her eyes.

"How far along are you?"  
"Well, approximately--"  
"What do you mean _approximately_? You don't know?"  
"There aren't any ultrasound machines on the island so it'd be a little hard to–"

Aunt Meg cut off Kate's words by placing her hand on Kate's belly again. She poked it again. Slapped it again, and this time instead of whispering she screamed at it.  
"You're 16 weeks along, give or take a day. Want to know the sex?"

"You can't know that," Sawyer interjected.  
"Did I ask you?" aunt Meg snapped. She turned back to Kate. "Well, do you or don't you?"

"No," Kate sniffed.  
"Good cuz I cant possibly know that."

Turning to Sawyer she added, "but I do know that whatever it is it'll rue the day god decided to give it you as a father. Frankly, I don't think your peabrain can handle a child."

"Meg," Sawyer said, "meet my son."

Gunner, who was supposed to be sleeping, had snuck out of the hut about 5 minutes ago and had chosen the back of his father's legs as a good hiding spot. Sawyer stepped aside to reveal him.

"You," Meg said, kneeling down. "You're the kid who's always pissing on my doorstep. Thought you were one of Jose's brood."  
"Oh screw you," Sawyer groaned. "Don't listen to her, Gun, she's crazy."

"What's your name, kid?" aunt Meg went on.   
"Gunner."

Aunt Meg looked up at Kate and then at Sawyer. "Now that's just stupid."

"How old are you, Gunner?"  
She expected the cutesy answer kids always gave when asked that question; a showing of their age on however many fingers accompanied by a "this many" declaration. Instead, Gunner just shrugged and said, "I don't know."  
"Smart too," Meg added.

"He's three," Kate said. "You're three," she told Gunner.

Aunt Meg continued staring at the boy even though all he did was smile at her. And seeing as how no kid ever smiled at her maybe that was why she kept on staring. "Well?" aunt Meg said after a while. "You do any tricks?"

Gunner shook his head.

Aunt Meg sighed and stood up again as if she'd heard all she needed to know. "What a boring little boy," she said. "Takes after his mother."

It was right about then that Kate realized she was probably never going to leave that lasting impression on aunt Meg that she so desperately wanted to. She picked Gunner up and balanced him on her hip. "It's way past his bedtime," she said apologetically.

"You think?" aunt Meg miffed. "Maybe you should do something about that."

Kate walked over to Sawyer to let him say goodnight to Gunner. Then, feeling obligated to, and maybe seeing the opportunity for one final chance to really connect with aunt Meg, Kate walked over to her too so that Gunner could say goodnight. Just like he had with Sawyer, the boy reached over and hugged her. Apparently he liked the idea of more family around just as much as Kate did.

Aunt Meg stood there stiffly, occasionally patting Gunner's back lightly until he finally let go of her.

"How's that asthma of yours?" aunt Meg muttered shrewdly before Kate could walk away. "Asthma's the worst, isnt it? All that heavy breathing..."

"Asthma? I don't..." Kate trailed off, fearing she knew exactly what aunt Meg was about to say. Her cheeks were already starting to redden from the embarrassment. "Oh right, that was the dead girl, Sharon or something," aunt Meg said. "My mistake."

Kate laughed nervously, relieved and a little rattled trying to figure out all of aunt Meg's head games.  
Once Kate disappeared into the hut and closed the door behind her Meg decided it was time to get down to business.

"Jose payed me three coconuts to convince you to be in some sort of play of his. So what do you say we get this show on the road."

Tired and desperately wanting to get this over with, Sawyer sat on one of the airplane seats outside his hut. Aunt Meg sat in the other.

"I like her," she suddenly said.  
"Kate?"  
"No, Sally."

"Well you sure have a strange way of showin' it," Sawyer muttered.  
"Oh like you didn't when you were courting her."  
"What are you talkin' about?"  
"I heard about that kiss you bribed out of her! I'm just keeping her on her toes just like you did."  
"Yeah well that's different. It worked."  
"I know," Meg said. "It's the Ford way."

Sawyer nodded, humoring her. "Right. _The Ford way_."

"Has she been feeling dizzy a lot?" aunt Meg asked.  
"Kate? Not really."  
"Because that's perfectly normal. And it'd be stupid of you to worry about it."  
"I _don't_." he snapped.

"When that baby comes along, she's gonna need to feed it. Do you know where that milk comes from?"  
"You've met Gunner, right?"  
"It's gonna come from her breast."

Sawyer winced and Aunt Meg took that as a sign that he was just too stupid and immature to have a baby. What she did not know was that Sawyer was simply horrified at having just heard an old lady say the word 'breast.'"

"Don't act so surprised, James. You suckled off your momma's breast and your uncle John suckled off mine!"

"_Cousin_ John."  
"No! Uncle! Pay attention."  
"Please stop..."

"I'd expect you to be a little more thankful for the wisdom I'm giving you. You know how lucky you are having your own long lost family member crash on an island with you? That's rare!"

"Pretty much impossible."

Sawyer sat back and leaned his head against the seat, wondering when she'd convince him to be in Jack's play so that she would leave.

"I know you don't think I'm your aunt," aunt Meg said candidly. "That's fine. You're an adult, you can make up your own damn mind."  
"Good to know."  
"But you should know that the reason your pockets are full of markers isn't cuz deep down you're just as weird as the rest of the people on this island. It's just a Ford family tradition. And I _am_ your aunt."

Sawyer turned to look at her in the eye, unnerved that she'd known that about him. "Carrying around a pack of markers is a perfectly normal thing for a heterosexual man to do," Sawyer warned. And after a moment he asked wearily, "you carry markers on you too?"  
"Nope. Cats."  
"What?"

Aunt Meg started emptying her pockets and sure enough there were the famed salamanders. She lined up the spotted little orange lizards on the armrest of the airplane seat and started naming them off, introducing them to her nephew.

"This is Fluffy. She's a bitch," she began. "That's Vivien, Zelda, Spots, Jackpot, James Ford–"  
"You got a cat named after me?" Sawyer asked.  
"'Course I do! He's just like you too."  
Sawyer didnt even want to ask.

"So are you going t do Jose's play or not?"  
"No."  
"Well," aunt Meg said, standing up. "Can't say I didn't try."

She collected her cats, stuffed them back into her pockets and left Sawyer there feeling baffled. It was always the way he felt after talking to her.

"Goodnight aunt Meg."  
She was way out of earshot by then.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12: AMATEUR  
Member of a theatre company which is not professional.  
**  
A day had passed but Kate's encounter with aunt Meg still left her with a lingering sense of unease.

Normally if someone had talked to her that way, she would've chuckled softly while secretly conspiring to burn down their hut later that night. But, no, she had just stood there and taken all of aunt Meg's little criticisms in the hopes of fostering a relationship with her.  
And there was still no relationship to speak of.

Kate frowned as she re-arranged and folded the tops in her wardrobe: three tank tops and four t-shirts. Why had she gone so far to try to earn Meg's approval? She was a crazy old lady who wasn't even Sawyer's real aunt.

She slumped her head when a thought entered her mind: except for Sun, she didn't really have any friends on the island. At first she hadn't really spent much time with people like Charlie or Sayid or Claire because she was making a conscious effort to distance herself from the people who, in her opinion, just weren't that important to the integrity of the group. Jack was the leader, Locke was the wise hunter, Sawyer was the token villain and she was the beautiful girl with the dark past. Everyone else was just a "minor character" in her eyes. And the camp was cliquey anyway so she really didnt think much of it.

But now, her lack of lasting friendships was starting to sadden her. She had turned into the loner she'd warned Sawyer he was turning into a couple years back. Of course, she hadnt been a loner her whole life but things changed once she took the title of escaped convict and all.

Just then, Gunner ran into the hut. The little bundle of energy threw himself onto the sandy floor and began crawling on all fours, poking his golden-haired head all around Kate's legs as he crawled circles around her. The sight of him made a smile instinctively cross her face, but it soon faded as her previous thoughts caught up with her again.

What if Gunner turned out to be a loner? What if he became a pathetic thirty-year old loser living in their basement with no friends and no life? They didn't even have a basement! He'd have to live with them! She suddenly realized that her and Sawyer's loner ways were putting Gunner at risk of becoming unhealthily attached to them.

Lost in her thoughts she could feel Gunner stand up again and wrap his arms around Kate's legs, as high as he could reach. Kate absently combed her fingers through his hair but his giggling brought her out of her reverie. Looking up at her, the boy rather randomly said, "Mommy, you my best friend."

She frowned.  
Something had to be done.

Two hours later Kate was triumphantly looking at the list she'd compiled of potential friends for Gunner while they were still on this island. She capped one of Sawyer's red markers and stuffed it into the pocket of a nearby pair of jeans she'd been folding earlier.

She turned her attention back to the list. It looked a little something like this:

**Jack Eko**  
Pro: quiet, stays out of trouble  
Con: creepily quiet, Jesus-freak

**Josefina**  
Pro?  
Con: doesn't have an 'indoor' voice, aggressive, slightly psychopathic, hairy in all the wrong places

**Jack Hugo Jr.**  
Pro: loves to nap, large (makes good shade)  
Con: large (might fall on Gunner and crush him), strange affinity for mayonnaise, picks his nose

**Jack Juan Locke**  
Pro: plays with knives, good survival skills, likes fruit, hates Jack  
Con: bald, jealous of Gunner's beautiful hair

**Jacka Sayida**  
Pro: Enjoys finding small animals  
Con: Enjoys torturing small animals

**Aaron**  
Pro: easily bullied, rape-whistle ensures safety at all times  
Con: sissy, mother too clingy, picks nose

**Soon-Yi**  
Pro: asian, good taste in books  
Con: after two dates, parents will insist on arranged marriage

Kate stared down at her list. It had taken a while to write but she was sure she'd gotten all the pros and cons down. She was proud of herself. And she was sure Sawyer would understand why she had to use his one of his t-shirts to write the list on. (She couldn't find any paper. Also, she didn't bother looking).

But now there was the hard part: picking a friend for her son. She wondered why she had even bothered putting any of Jack's children down, with the exception of Jack Juan Locke. Gunner could learn a lot from him, including the proper way to handle a knife, how to spear a boar from a distance of twenty feet, and the most importantly, how to start a fire. Well, she could easily teach him all that stuff herself.  
As for Soon-Yi, after years of trying to set up play dates for them, Kate was now wary of a potential friendship between Gunner and the girl. She was going to be hot when she grew up, and as much as Kate didnt want Gunner living in the basement she also didnt want him throwing his life away chasing after some girl. Kate grabbed the marker again and scribbled "harlot" on Soon-Yi's Con side. Much better.

That left Aaron, who seemed to be the least of seven evils. But how would she convince Claire to let the two boys play with each other? She rarely let anyone even touch Aaron without screaming to the top of her lungs. It certainly didn't help that Sawyer had called him a pansyass wimp just a few days prior.

She pictured Claire in her mind's eye in an attempt to get inside her head and understand her. She was blonde. Annoying. High-pitched. Always on edge. Single mom. Australian. She had been kidnapped by the Others, _that_ they had in common, although Claire had been drugged with a mysterious compound, while she on the other hand, had just been tied up and groped– not unpleasant at all. This was not going to be easy. She needed a plan.

Half an hour later Kate was standing outside Claire's doorstep, knocking on the hut's flimsy door.

"Who's there!" a shrill voice uttered from behind the door.  
"It's Kate." There was a long silence. "Kate… Austen. Gunner's mom," she explained.  
"Are you really Kate, or are you just pretending to be Kate so I'll open the door and you'll kidnap me or rape me and kill and eat my byebee?"

Kate stepped back cautiously. "Um, it's Kate. Seriously."

Kate heard the sounds of several large metal locks being undone before the door finally swung open revealing Claire carrying Aaron with one hand, and a cricket bat gripped firmly in the other. Two pairs of identical blue eyes stared back at Kate suspiciously.

"Alright, Kate. What do you want? Aaron honey, get your whistle ready, just in case."  
Aaron did so, staring at Kate intently with big bright eyes, his lip trembling around the mouth of his rape whistle.

"Look I just wanted to apologize about everything," Kate began. "What happened at the beach, what happened at therapy… Sawyer... well he's just..." she hesitated. "To be honest, he's the worst father ever."

She didnt want to say this but she figured it was the only way to get Claire to really listen to her. And if she really did have to compare her parenting skills to Sawyer's, well, there was no contest.

"I just defend him to make him feel better," she went on, doing what she did best: lying. "I try to teach him good parenting but you know how he is, really stubborn and defensive. Always with the snappy comebacks. And I don't want you to hold it against Gunner and me."  
Claire eyed her carefully, then softened her stance.

"Well, alright," she exclaimed, "I know what scum men can be. This one's father ran out on me a little more than a month before the plane crashed. Left me with nothing but a swollen belly, a pile of bills and a take-out container of shrimp in hot sauce."

Kate shifted uncomfortably, not knowing what to say. In the end she just laughed nervously. Which, by the way Claire and Aaron looked at her, wasn't the correct reaction."

"Daddy's going to burn in hell," Aaron said in a low voice.

Kate could only stare and then nod slowly. "Of course he is, sweetie."

"Do you know how hard it is being a single mom?" Claire asked.  
"Well I was a single mom for a few hours when the Others kidnapped Sawyer..."  
Claire stared at Kate incredulously. "I have to do it all by myself! I don't have a big, strong man making sure the Others don't kidnap us! I have _Charlie!_."  
Which really said it all.

"Well," Kate began, finally seeing her seguey, "that's why I'm here. I think you need some time off. You look tired, Claire. You've been taking care of Aaron non-stop since he was born."  
"Well, yeah, I am a bit worn down. With all the trouble this little tyke gets in to."  
She looked down at Aaron, who was fast asleep, the whistle idly dangling from his neck.

"What would you say to a play date for Gunner and Aaron? I'll watch them both."  
Claire paused, considering her request. Claire didnt no much about Kate but she did know that she had a reputation for being a liar, a schemer, an attention hog, and a floozie. Oh and an escaped convict.

"Hey, arent you a convict?"  
"I've never been tried."  
"Oh."

The women stared at each other tentatively.

"Why do you so desperately want to help me get some time to myself?" Claire asked. "Is this all part of some big plan to get me alone? Are you working with the Others!"  
"Claire, no! It's just that Aaron is so well-behaved, I'm thinking he could rub off on Gunner. I don't want my son ending up like his father," Kate pleaded.

Her face drooped slightly like that of a sad puppy dog. It appeared to Claire that Kate wasn't asking a favor. She was asking for her help. Claire had to admit that she was in fact, very tired, not having slept for more than two hours at a time for nearly four years.  
"Well I suppose Aaron can spend a few hours with you and Gunner."

"Great!" Kate exclaimed.

Claire put Aaron down and went to pack a bag full of his necessary day-to-day things.  
Kate sighed deeply. It had worked, she had talked Claire into giving her son over to her through sheer wit. But something about dealing with her in this manner was… unsatisfying. She couldn't quite put her finger on it until she stuffed her hand in her back pocket and felt the tiny bottle she had stashed there. Her backup plan.What the hell, she thought.  
"Hey Claire, want a drink?"

Kate was hiding. She tried to inconspicuously raise her head from behind the fallen tree trunk so that she could peek over it, but failed miserably. Mainly because Kate was terrible at hiding. Afterall, she had once been caught by the Others after hiding for all of two minutes. To her right, Gunner peered over and readied a foot-long twig in his hand, ready to to strike any enemy that might enter his field of vision. On Kate's other side, Aaron hid as well, only he wasn't playing pretend.

He poked his head up and forced his eyes open. With a terribly frightened expression across his face, he clung onto the trunk with sweaty palms as if it was his mother and tried to brace himself for what he might find. His bespeckled eyes darted rapidly around the forest looking for wild animals or worse yet, Others.

He had heard plenty about the Others his whole life. In fact, his very first memory was of his mother leaning over him and telling him that the Others would one day find him and eat him. That was exactly what she told him, and as much as Aaron would've hoped for it, she never finished that sentence with a "if you don't eat your vegetables." So while most kids worried about the boogeyman, or ghosts, for Aaron, a dirty, smelly man dressed in tatters and sporting a fake beard, was the picture of horror.

That was why he was having so much trouble understanding why Kate had taken him and Gunner on what she explained to be a "jungle expedition to find boar and Others." He didnt know what 'expedition' or 'boar' meant, but he understood 'Others.' 

"See anything, guys?" Kate whispered, her eyes looking far into the distance.  
"I SEE OTHERS!" Gunner shouted. He jumped over the log, ran forward a few feet, and pointed his twig gun at all the trees in front of him.

Aaron quickly ducked down while Kate smiled as she watched Gunner kill some imaginary people.

"Did you get 'em all?" She asked, standing up and stepping over the log to join him.

After repeatedly trying to shoot down one particular tree that just wouldn't die, Gunner finally stopped and sighed as if he'd undertaken a particularly difficult task. "This ain' over, Zeke," he said to that tree that just wouldnt die.  
It was a line he'd gotten from his father who, when angry about nothing in particular, would often times trail off, muttering about how he was going to get Zeke one of these days. Gunner had no idea who Zeke was but he was on his dad's side.

Kate came up behind and hugged him. So far they'd spent the day climbing trees and hunting Others. She was as proud as any mother could be "You are such a good little Hunter," she told him. Then she paused, thinking of something. "Shoulda named you Hunter."

"Where Aaron?" Gunner asked, looking around.

Kate's head spun around quickly. _Damn_, she thought. Aaron was a slippery one if he could evade the best mother ever. She obviously taught him the art of hiding a little too well.

"Aaron?" she called. She walked back to the log and peered over it to find Aaron laying on the ground in a fetal position, hugging his knees. He was whimpering, not like a small child, but more like a certain disturbed doctor-turned-playwright who had just relived a naked twister memory.

"Aaron, there arent any Others," Kate tried assuring him. "We were just playing."  
Gunner came to stand in front of Aaron. He looked down at the other boy whose eyes were squeezed shut. "I shot 'em!" he announced.

When Aaron opened his eyes he saw the sharp end of Gunner's twig staring back at him. He quickly shut them again, and instinctively felt around his neck for his rape whistle. Kate had wisely taken it away from him before heading out, explaining that rape whistles were for pansy ass little wimps and girls with drunk perverted step-fathers who actually turn out to be real fathers.

She kneeled down and rubbed Aaron's back. "Don't be scared, Aaron, there's no one out here but us."

This seemed to scare the child even more. "We… all alone?" he asked in a soft, hushed tone.  
Kate tried to think of something that would comfort him and instantly thought of Claire. "Your mom's not too far away. You'll see her again in no time."  
By the looks of the tears welling up behind Aaron's eyes, Kate surmised that maybe bringing up his mother wasn't the best move either.

"Why was mummy sleeping?" Aaron asked. "She never sleeps, so Aaron won't be eaten."

Kate _had_ to drug Claire.

It was practically in her nature to do so. She'd drugged Jack with crushed sleeping pills after Boone's death when the pasty, sweaty, living-on-an-ounce-of-blood doctor was convinced he could rule the world and beat up Locke and order people around all at the same time.  
And she'd drugged Michael cuz he was being a bitch about not letting her on the raft.

Heck, she was toying with the idea of drugging Hurley just to see how much it would take to knock him out.

Drugging Claire just seemed like a natural progression. Was it really so important that she have a "motive?" It wasn't exactly out of character for her. In fact, the only reason she felt compelled to do it was because it just seemed like something she'd do.

"We don't have to hunt if you don't want to," Kate said, changing the subject. "We can just track. Do you want to track?"

The boy shook his head no.

"Okay, how 'bout a walk. We can take a walk."

Even though Aaron was more used to being carried everywhere he went along with the walk mainly because he feared Kate and Gunner might just leave him if he didnt. But it wasn't so bad anyway. All it really was was an educational tour.

Kate paused in front of a tree and the boys stopped behind her. "See this tree?" she pointed out. "It's a Sterculia tree of the Sterculiaceae family, common in tropical settings and well-known for being extremely flammable." Then she turned to Gunner and added, "It's where your daddy and I made you."

She smiled up at the tree, remembering that particular moment but then stood back, re-examining it.  
"Or was is that tree?" She stepped up closer to another tree and switched into tracking mode, trying to determine whether the tree displayed the proper markings. Say, button rubbings... or other rubbings. Truth be told, many of the trees did.

"Maybe it was that tree?" She continued. "Oh, it coulda been that one too. That one was fun."  
Gunner stared up at her and, noticing this, Kate felt the need to explain. "Your daddy really likes making love in the jungle."

"Mommy?"

Kate kneeled down in front of Gunner. He idly put his hand on her shoulder and she brushed the hair off his forehead. "Yeah?" she said.

"What does making love mean?"

"Well, Gunner..." She knew this was a tricky subject to deal with. Watching re-runs of Full House taught her as much. She also knew that it was time to step up and really be the good mother she knew she could be for Gunner. If Sawyer was here she knew he'd handle this head on like a good parent. In an effort to be more like Sawyer, she decided to be a good parent and speak truthfully. Even though she could've lied, it was important never to lie to your child. So she had to choose her words carefully. 

"Making love means having sex."

Satisfied with herself, Kate was ready to leave it at that and resume the walking tour when Gunner asked another question that demanded her full attention.

"What that mean?"

She tried to think of a way to explain it in terms a child would understand. "Ok, think of an oyster," she began. "Now think of a snake--"

Luckily for everyone present, Aaron found something to distract them all. Smiling for the very first time in a long time (possibly for the first time ever), he looked down at the doll by his feet. He'd stumbled upon it while looking for a good hiding space should Others turn up. The doll was missing an eye but he could work with that.

"Gunner's Mummy!" he called. It was apparently her name now.

She and Gunner came to see what all the fuss was about.

"A dolly!" Aaron said excitedly. "It looks just like mummy." It actually kinda did. "Can I have it?"

While Gunner stood unimpressed, a sly smile snuck onto Kate's face. She recognized the doll as one of Rousseau's. Where the french woman got so many dolls to plant around the jungle was anybody's guess, but the important thing was that they had found one. And Kate saw it as the perfect thing to add a little excitement to the walk.

So, after positioning Gunner and Aaron just so, and allowing Aaron to pick up the doll, Kate stood back and watched as the net swept them up and into the branches. She could hear Gunner laugh but she couldn't make out whether Aaron was laughing or crying. Just because it was easier, she made herself believe he was laughing.

"You're fearless, Gunner!" She shouted, grinning from ear to ear.  
"I'm fearless!" The boy shouted back.

Sawyer laid comfortably in his hammock, secretly enjoying a copy of some "Babysitter's Club" book he'd found in the hatch. Reading novelas for children and teens was a guilty pleasure of his, having missed out on the books as a youth. After running away from his foster home at the age of twelve, an illiterate Sawyer had taught himself to read by studying the scribblings he in bus station bathroom stalls and the occasional Penthouse Forum he came across in his travels. The subject matter was somewhat age-inappropriate.  
He was just getting to the part where Mary Anne nearly loses one of the kids at the mall when he heard a rustling at the door. Swearing under his breath, he hopped off the hammock clumsily, falling in the process and landing awkwardly on the floor. Just as the door opened, he tossed the book under the bed and clamored on top of it, assuming a relaxed, care-free pose.

It was Kate, Gunner, and Aaron, who was holding a doll with a vacant, vaguely angry expression on her face. It looked a lot like Claire. Kate had told him was that she was supervising a play-date with Gunner and Aaron, but he didn't expect them back so soon. Normally he would've objected to having his son spend the day with a little pansy ass wimp, but Sawyer wanted a few hours of peace and quiet to himself to indulge in his secret passion. 

Kate walked up to him, tossing a mango onto his lap, and smiled.  
"Did you just throw a mango at me?" Sawyer drawled, holding the fruit up, eyebrow cocked.  
"Couldn't find any rocks."

She grinned and bent down to give Sawyer a kiss, which he gladly accepted. He reluctantly stopped this shared moment of sweetness though, when out of the corner of his eye he saw Aaron staring at them, dumbfounded.

As Sawyer slowly pulled back, Kate turned to see what had gotten his attention.  
"Something wrong, Aaron?" Kate asked, seeing the boy looking stunned.

"When Fake-Daddy-Charlie try to kiss Mummy she hits him and yells wesbian," he explained.

Kate and Sawyer really didnt know how to respond to that, and after a moment of just staring at the child, they decided to just pick up where they left off.

"What did you do today?" Kate asked.  
"I read," Sawyer began, before catching himself. "I um, cleaned my guns. All of them." He crossed his arms tightly, showing off his rather manly and well-toned arms.

"So what's next on the itinerary for you boys?" Sawyer asked, changing the subject quickly. "And more importantly, how much more time do I have to myself?"

After finishing his book, he had planned on working on his list of nicknames for everyone on the island, which in recent months he had be neglecting. It became evident to him the previous night when he called Charlie "english-face" that he needed some new material.

"Actually these little guys wore me out," Kate said.  
"Is that right? What'd you do? Set forest fires?" He smirked but then added seriously in a quieter tone, "you didn't start any more forest fires, did you?"  
"No. We just hunted for Others and went mango picking,"

"You took them mango picking? I thought you told me you weren't going to climb any trees in your condition."

Sawyer, was incredibly over-protective of Kate when she last was pregnant, and this time would be no different. The moment he saw the gentle curve of Bump, he had made her swear not to climb trees anymore, and she had. She of course, lied, even though he had made her swear she wasn't lying.

"Please don't call Bump a condition," she said. "And besides I didn't do any of the climbing. Gunner did." Lied again.

"Me and Aaron got caught in a net!" Gunner announced.

Sawyer looked at his son grinning and then turned to look at Aaron hugging his doll. He then turned to Kate, with a slight frown.

"Ain't that a little gay?"

"A little," Kate replied. "They loved it. Anyway, you get them for the rest of the day."

She patted Sawyer's shoulder and started walking past him towards the bed.

"What d'ya mean I get them for the rest of the day? Why can't you just drop Aaron back at Claire's?"

"Because she's still sleeping."  
"And when exactly will she be _waking up_?" he asked sardonically.  
"In about two to four hours, depending on her body weight and whether she ate before I dr... before _she_ went to sleep."

Sawyer gave a her a look. Kate understood it to mean, 'don't tell me you drugged her.' So she didn't.

"Don't worry, Sawyer, you don't need to do anything. Just watch them. I'll be taking a nap. Here's your whistle back, Aaron." Kate handed the rape whistle to him and shoved Aaron's bag into Sawyer's protesting hands.

Sawyer sat back, defeated. He huffed and made for the door, motioning for the two boys to join him. Gunner trotted behind him, humming what sounded like "You All Everybody." Aaron ran up and placed his hand in Sawyer's.

"Let's hold hands!" he exclaimed excitedly, never having the opportunity to hold anyone's hands but his mother's.

Once outside, Sawyer sat down in his well-worn airplane seat and retrieved a small paperback novela from his back pocket.

The boys stopped in front of him, Gunner swinging his arms around absent-mindedly and Aaron hugging his doll and staring at Sawyer.  
What was it with kids and staring at him?

"Go play," he commanded.

They stayed.

"You two can do anything you damn well want. I won't tell."

"I want play tea party," Aaron said in his delicate Aussie/Brit accent.

Sawyer scoffed. "'Course you do," he said. "We ain't playin' tea party."

"But that's what I wanna play."

"Look, I've got books. You want some books?" Sawyer suggested.

Aaron shook his head.

"What about this stick?" Sawyer picked up a stick next to his seat and threw it a few feet away. "Go get it."

Apparently, in Sawyer's mind, dogs and children enjoyed playing the same games. Coincidently, Sawyer's stick was discovered a minute later by Vincent, who also brought with him a note that read, "WE ARE COMING, love The Others" but he ate it before he could pass it on to Sawyer.

"Mummy says sticks are dangewus," Aaron said. "They cowapse on me and hurt me."  
"Okay then, go run around and play tag."  
"Mummy says running is bad for me. I could cowapse."  
"Then go build sand castles or something."  
"Mummy says sand castles could get too big and co–"  
"--llapse on you?" Sawyer finished for him. Gunner and Aaron just stood there and continued looking at him.

"I want to play tea party," Aaron repeated.   
"And I want to kill the man who slept with my mama but that ain't gonna happen now is it?"

An awkward pause.

"But that's all I want to play."  
"Look, we can't. We don't have any tea cups. Can't have a tea party without tea cups."  
"Mummy packed them for me."

Sawyer, not believing what he was hearing, grabbed Aaron's bag and dug through its contents. Shoving aside the first aid kit, the framed passport photo of his mother, and a turnip with a crudely-drawn head on it, he retrieved a pink plastic tea cup. It was only one among a set of many. Where the hell did she manage to get an entire tea party toy set?

"Where the hell did she manage to get an entire tea party toy set?"

"Mummy and Fake-Daddy-Charlie and me play all the time. It's my favorite game."

Sawyer sighed and stuffed the cup back into Aaron's bag.  
"Listen Milhouse," he began, "What you and your mommy and tag-along drug addict do behind closed doors is _thankfully_ none of my business but there is no way I'm ever going to let my son play with these pretty little tea cups that probably belonged to a prissy little girl before you got your hands on 'em. So you can do whatever you want but me and Gun are out."

He smiled cockily, satisfied with himself that he had made his point and settled the matter. Aaron wouldn't dare challenge him.

Sawyer scowled as he pressed the pink cup to his lips and took a sip of imaginary tea.

"Careful, it's hot," Aaron warned him.

So it seemed the threat of Aaron's rape whistle was more than any Sawyer could produce.

Not wanting to risk being seen and thereby being endlessly made fun of for partaking in the tea party, Sawyer had taken the two of them to the most remote place on the beach he could think of; his "office" as he liked to call it. Basically it was a round table made out of a tree stump a ways off from the main camp, where on most Sunday mornings, Sawyer could be found lounging, yelling threats and new nicknames at passersby and waving a rifle menacingly.

It became increasingly clear that the spot wasn't remote enough, however, when after a few minutes he was not only hosting a tea party for the two boys but for all the little girls on the island as well.

Josefina and Jacka Sayida had flocked to the tea party as if they had some sort of built-in radar that could innately detect any type of girly activity at play. And although Sawyer'd told them to go away they'd stayed and made themselves at home. Soon-Yi had somehow gotten wind of the tea party as well, dragging Sun with her and asking permission if she could say. And before Sawyer could resist, Sun had apparently got it in her head that Sawyer had a agreed to watch Soon-Yi for a little while.

So now, here he was, sitting at a tea party, looking after all the little girls on the island, and his son. At the moment, while everyone else tested their imaginary tea, he was unwillingly participating in a staring contest with Josefina. The girl was sporting a 'Jack face,' lips tightened, an expression of intense focus and utter constipation spread across her face. It was like she was morphing into her father right before his eyes. Sawyer just couldn't look away.

Finally, she broke her uncharicteristic silence by shouting, "MY FATHER SAY YOU A CRIMINAL!"

"Your father's got an ugly daughter," Sawyer replied.

"Jacka Sayida!" Jacka Sayida said. 

"Relax, you ain't even his."

He glanced in Gunner's direction and noticed that he seemed to be enjoying himself.

Sawyer looked down at his empty tea cup. It was in that moment that he admired Kate's enthusiasm for playing with not only their kid but everyone else's too. In an effort to be more like her, he made a concious decision to really try and participate in the party. He picked up an imaginary sugar cube from the plate in the center of the 'table' and dunked it into his cup.

The tea party actually wasn't that bad. The kids were pretty quiet. Except for Josefina but Sawyer was getting used to tuning her out.

"Mr Sawyer," he heard a small voice say. He looked down to his right, seeing Soon-Yi look up at him with timid eyes. "May you please pass sugar?"

Pretty soon Sawyer found himself having a conversation with the 3 year-old about his favorite books, while Gunner seemed to be having a conversation of his own with a different 3 year-old.

"You cant have it. It's mine," Gunner said.  
"LET ME PLAY WITH IT!" Josefina shouted.

The object causing so much of an uproar was Gunner's toy airplane, formerly Kate's toy airplane. Or at least Kate's stolen toy airplane.

"My mommy don't let me share it!" he tried to explain.  
"GIVE IT TO ME! MY FATHER A DOCTOR!"   
"No!" He hugged the plane close himself but Josefina still tried to grab at it.

Sawyer, too busy discussing the virtues of Sylvia Plath to an enthralled Soon-Yi , was completely oblivious to this little verbal spat between the two kids. It was finally all brought to his attention when he heard Gunner's ear-splitting cry. 

Immediately alarmed, his head snapped around to catch a vision of his son crying his poor little eyes out, part of a toy airplane stucking out of his nose.

TBC


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13: Gun Microphone  
(An actual theater term. Not sure what it means but it sounds cool)**

Sawyer was a lot of things: snarky, disrespectful, ill-mannered, frequently sleazy and arguably injury-prone (he had after all, been shanked in the arm, shot in the shoulder, and his gut had been on the receiving end of 300 pounds of speeding blubber in the form of Hurley). But of all the traits Sawyer could have possibly passed on to Gunner, he feared passing this one the most.

Because as it was, seeing his son crying and bloody was enough to scare Sawyer out of his wits. Mostly because, when no one was looking, Sawyer was a bonafide crier and he hoped Gunner didnt inherit this trait either. Sawyer cried when his father killed his mother. He cried when his father killed himself moments later. He also cried at the end of "Joy Luck Club." It was the 2nd most shameful secret of his life, more embarrassing then the time he went home with a transvestite prostitute. (S)he was hot... and nothing happened!

With his heart beating faster than he thought it could, Sawyer rushed to Gunner and clasped his hands on either side of his son's face, trying to survey the damage.

He had seen Gunner scrape his knee, bang his head, and fall every which way when he was first learning to walk (and when Kate was learning how to change him), but none of these incidents resulted in Gunner crying, let alone the screeching, gut-wrenching, drenching wails he was enduring now. After always thinking of him as a tough kid, seeing Gunner like this elicited a sort of worry Sawyer had never felt before.

"What the hell happened!" He yelled. At first glance he couldn't make out what was protruding out of his son's nose, but now he could see that covered in a sticky stew of blood, snot, and tears, was Kate's toy airplane. It hung limply from Gunner's left nostril as if it had gotten stuck in there on its way down to a crash landing.

"Aw not your mother's toy plane!" Sawyer half whined, half shouted. "Do you know how much she likes this thing! She's obsessed! She takes it out to the shore line just to stare at it every night! She robbed a whole damn bank for it for God's sake!"

Gunner responded to this interesting little tidbit by screaming some more. Realizing that showing Gunner just how scared he was by screaming at him was only getting the boy even more frightened, Sawyer decided it was probably best to keep his head cool in a situation like this. 

"Hold still," he told him.

Gunner ignored him, sobbing uncontrollably, flailing his arms about wildly and shaking his head as Sawyer tried to get a good grip on the plane. But every time he pulled or twisted or even touched the thing, Gunner supplied him with a fresh shriek, louder than the one preceding it. The toy was wedged in there and it wasn't coming out. And it was the tail too so that Sawyer could even see all the pointy parts of it trying to poke through Gun's nose.  
Gunner looked back at his dad, hopeless and scared and Sawyer looked back at him with the same expression, as if they were on opposite sides of a mirror. And that was when his whole keeping cool idea was shot to hell.

"Fck fck fck fck fck fck FCK!"

Completely forgotten to Sawyer, were the children behind him observing the entire situation, including his stream of profanity. They each reacted in their own way.

Soon-Yi stood frozen in shock knowing she had just heard something her sheltered little ears were not supposed to hear. She ever so slowly (as slowly, say, as her mother had once covered herself up after being caught naked by Michael) lifted her hands to cover her ears. "Earmuffs," she whispered to herself in Korean.  
Aaron simply stared, looking faint.  
Jacka Sayida had a disillusioned look on her face and uttered the words, "Jacka Sayida?"  
And Josefina opened her mouth and after a dramatic pause shouted, "FCK!"

"How'd you get an airplane up there, Gun!"

"Josefina!" The boy cried.

Josefina, watching from behind Sawyer's shoulder with a demented sort of interest, answered this accusation by yelling, "FATHER SAID I CAN HAVE ANYTHING I WANT!"  
Her indoor voice was as loud as ever.

Although the situation was not life-threatening, and Gunner was only crying because he was simply scared, Sawyer chose this moment to freak out.

"We need a doctor!" He yelled, frantic now. "Jack!"

He turned around and scanned the beach but it suddenly seemed quite empty except for all the children surrounding him. His eyes stopped on Aaron.

"Gimmie your whistle!" He lunged for Aaron's rape whistle but Aaron pulled it out of his reach.

"Mummy says only I'm allowed to use it for umogencies," Aaron explained.  
"Cant you see this _is_ an emergency! Blow on it!"  
"But I'm fine," Aaron said.

"Josefina, go call your father! We need a doctor!" Josefina simply scowled and folded her arms over her chest and as if trying to resemble her mother even more she said, "MAYBE WE SHOULD PUT HIM IN THE PIT!" 

Sawyer huffed and gave up on trying to communicate with 3 year-olds. "Help!" He yelled. "We need help!"  
A few yards away, some leaves rustled.  
"Jack!" Sawyer asked. "Locke! Sayid! Eko! Steve!"

But none of them answered. Instead, strolling up toward them was Charlie, his guitar hanging over his shoulder.

"I heard there was a tea party!" he exclaimed, grinning that British-toothed grin of his. "Can I join in? I brought biscuits!" Of course, they were imaginary biscuits because Charlie was an imaginary food aficionado. He did however, bring real heroin, in case the kids wanted to "party" afterwards.

Although Charlie was probably the last person Sawyer would've called for help, he grabbed hold of the Brit's scrawny shoulders as if he was the savior he had been calling for. Spinning him around, he put him face-to-face with Gunner, hoping he'd be able to do something.

"Blimey," Charlie said. "There's a bloody toy plane sticking out of Gunner's nose. Literary bloody."

"I know that!" Sawyer snapped. "What do I do?"

"I used to get stuff stuck up my nose all the time. Couple hundred quid (English currency), fags (English for cigarettes), some spotted dick (English dessert), dildos (dildos), and this one time, at band camp, I stuck up a flute up my – "  
"Outta the way!" Sawyer bellowed.

Sawyer pushed Charlie to the ground and resumed his place in front of Gunner.

Crazy with worry, and feeling absolutely hopeless, Sawyer started digging through his pockets, trying to find something that would help with the situation. The first thing he took out was a handful of markers. He angrily tossed them aside, finding his prized possessions useless at a time like this.  
Josefina collected the loot.

The next thing he found was the notebook of nicknames he was in middle of compiling. He tossed that aside too and nearly ripped his pockets out taking out the next item.  
"Where the hell did this come from!" He asked himself, looking at the condom he held in his hand. Instead of throwing it away, he stuck it in his breast pocket.

"A little coconut oil will clear that right up."

Sawyer turned around and saw Aunt Meg behind him. "Well do you have any or not!"

"Calm your horses, James. You're not the only one with pockets full of stuff."  
She rummaged into her own pockets, first pulling out a framed and signed picture of Barry Manilow, and then a bright orange salamander. She hurled the salamander toward Sawyer. "There you go."

Sawyer recoiled, picking up the salamander by the tail with as little skin to skin contact as possible, and flung it away in disgust.  
Jacka Sayida collected the loot.

Sawyer pulled out the last item from his pocket; a palm-sized piece of bubblewrap. The very same kind he'd once wrapped Kate it when she was pregnant with Gunner. He gave this to Gunner and told him to pop the bubbles hoping it'd distract him. And Gunner needed to be distracted because Sawyer decided to pick him up and carry him over to Jack's tent as he screamed for help and 4 little girls trailed after him.

"Oi, wait for me!" Charlie shouted.  
5 little girls.

They all barged into Jack's hut, passing a sign on the door that read, "Artist asleep, only wake for Redneck Sushi emergencies."

"Jack! We need help!"

Jack awoke to the sounds of Gunner crying and Sawyer yelling. It could only mean one thing; his masterpiece was in trouble.  
Realizing that this was an emergency and that he was needed for something, he shot up out of bed and quickly grabbed a pen and paper from his desk nearby.

"_Is there a play emergency_?" He asked, just as frazzled and desperate as Sawyer looked.

"No!" Sawyer said. "It's Gunner. He needs a doctor!"

Those words, "he needs a doctor," resounded in Jack's head for what seemed like an eternity. Where once he would've acted quickly, now he had a decision to make. He'd left the medical life some time ago (one week) in order to become a playwright– his true passion (of one week).

"Sawyer, I'm a writer now. And it's Jose."

It was only when Sawyer violently grabbed a fistful of Jack's shirt collar, that Jack began rethinking his position a little bit. He faced an internal conflict the likes of which only superheros dealt with. Which was when he realized that that was exactly what he was; _a superhero_. His playwright self was just his alter ego.

Jack looked at the boy attached to Kate's beloved toy airplane and knew what he had to do.

"Okay," he said. "I'll save his life."  
Not that Gunner's life needed saving, but Jack got the airplane out either way. All he had to do was press down on Gunner's empty nostril and have him blow out the plane. And when that didnt work he just yanked it out as quickly and with as much force as possible. Then, making sure he hadn't broken the child's nose in the process, Jack declared himself a hero for all to hear. He grabbed a rag off his desk that had been used for who-knows-what and stuffed it into the boy's bloody nostril.

Squinting, Jack looked into Gunner's eyes and in all seriousness asked, "Can you tell me what year it is?" Gunner, considerably calmer now but still sniffing back some tears, only looked at Jack blankly. "Okay, do you know what your name is?"

"Gun."

"No, that's a weapon. What about your parent's names, can you tell me those?"

"Freckles and Sawyer."

Jack exhaled, straightened his posture and stood akimbo. He turned to Sawyer. "He doesn't seem to know anything. There may be brain damage."

Sawyer rolled his eyes and readjusted Gunner in his arms as he prepared to leave. "You should talk to your daughter about shoving toys up kids' noses."

"What's the big deal?" Jack asked. "It's probably just a crush. Didnt you ever shove things up girls' noses when you had crushes on them?"

"You stay away from Kate!" 

With that, Sawyer took his son and walked out of Jack's hut.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14: Role reversal  
(Do I have to exlpain everything to you people! Gosh!)**

The first thing Sawyer did when he left Jack's hut was punch Charlie in the mouth.

There was no real reason for it, and he certainly could've at least put Gunner down when he did it, but Gunner wanted to be carried and Charlie was just asking to be punched. Actually he wasn't - all the Hobbit was doing was standing outside, minding his own business and smiling earnestly as he always did.

It was a great way for Sawyer to relieve himself of the pent-up stress from the whole plane-in-the-nose ordeal. And Charlie looked all the better for it, even if he was now missing a front tooth. Actually, _because_ he was missing a front tooth. He was British, after all – the less the teeth the better.

And instead of taking Aaron home to his mother, Sawyer thought it best to leave the boy with Charlie to help him look for the lost tooth in the sand. The last thing he needed at the moment was a drugged out (or sleepy, if anyone asked) Claire demanding to know why Kate had left Aaron in his care. And if she saw him with Charlie, she'd just think he had kidnapped him again, which he did every other Tuesday anyway.

He had more important things to worry about. Like Kate demanding to know how Gunner could've possibly gotten hurt playing tea party. Though, he wasn't so much worried about Kate seeing Gunner's injury as he was about her knowing that her toy airplane was the cause of it.

Ever since Kate had retrieved the toy plane from that locked briefcase, it had never left her sight. Though she let Gunner play with it (there were somethings a mother could not deny her son), she was always there to supervise. Typically, she'd carry it on her person everywhere she went and tucked it safely under her pillow at night when she went to sleep. How Gunner had managed to get ahold of it was beyond his father, but Sawyer felt proud that he took after him in any way.

"Whatever you do, don't cry," Sawyer said as he walked towards their hut. "We don't want to worry your mom in her condition. She's extra sensitive right now you know, because of Bump."

"Bump," Gunner repeated, gritting his teeth, resenting his unborn sibling more than ever.

"Right. Now, you look alright aside from that rag in your nose but knowing Freckles she probably won't even notice it. So, just pretend everythin's a-okay. Got it?"

Gunner nodded, and gave his dad a thumbs up.

Sawyer stopped infront of the door, wiped Gunner's cheeks to make them look their driest, and then walked inside.

As soon as Gunner saw his mother, he started to cry.  
Like most small shildren suffering from very minor injuries, as soon as Gunner saw his mother, he ran into her arms and began to wail, seeking the familiar affection and comfort.

After telling Kate that Josefina had tried to beat up Gunner, Sawyer had reluctantly admitted that after an injury-free morning of tree climbing, Kate had proven herlsef to be the better parent. Now, he'd only said this to avoid confrontation and any further questioning from Kate.

"And it was a stick that she shoved up his nose?" Kate asked as she held Gunner on her lap.  
"Yep." Now Sawyer was the one lying.

With the toy plane in his pocket, he casually strode over to the bed and sat right at the edge of it. In one slick motion, he slipped it under her pillow.

When Kate walked into Jack's hut, Jack was unaware. It was odd how it always happened like this. Ironically, even though Kate was always foremost in his mind and he normally would've been waiting for her at the door until she appeared, whenever she walked into his hut he was completely oblivious to it. As if he subconsciously wanted her to see him like this; candidly, uncensored, _raw_. Or maybe if was a conscious effort on his part. No one but Jack would ever really know.

Anyway, when Kate walked in, she caught Jack talking to Jacka Sayida. But as she listened closely it seemed more like the two were having a conversation, with Jacka Sayida an active participant.

"When I saw Kate's plane sticking out of that kid it brought up a lot of questions that I and I think a lot of other people wanted to see answered," he told his daughter.  
She, in turn, responded, "Jacka Sayida?"

"Well, the biggest question would be, am I a doctor or am I a writer? Sometimes you'll be introduced to someone who you think is a doctor but you begin to realize that maybe they're not that much of a doctor. And sometimes you'll have someone who's a playwright but then you see that maybe they aren't that much of a playwright. So that was a really cool moral conflict for me to explore and I think for everyone else to watch as well."

"Um Jack," Kate tried to interject.  
Neither Jacka Sayida nor Jack seemed to hear her.

"Jacka Sayida?" Jack Sayida pressed on.

"Of course not."

"Jacka _Sayida_."  
"No, that's not going to happen," Jack chuckled. "Believe me."

"Jacka Sa–"

"Believe me!"

"Jacka Sayida?"

"Do I think that I'll be able to fully grow into the writer part of myself? Absolutely. I know exactly what's going to happen in my life."

"Jacka Sayida."

"Okay, I'll prove it. For example, I have no doubt that Kate and I will end up together. Trust me — the people that are creating this story of ours– and by that I mean Jesus and Dumbledore–"

"Jacka Sayida!"

"No, sweetheart, Santa Claus doesn't exist. It's only Jesus and Dumbledore in charge of things up there. Anyway, as I was saying, the people responsible for creating this story of ours do not just throw stuff like that around lightly. Kate and I were both on a plane together that crashed on this island for a reason. And that reason was so that we could fall in love and make babies. People who pay really close attention to us, and me in particular, know that that was the reason we crashed here. That plane was put into our lives for people to think that specific thing and so therefore I think that we will find out that that is absolutely true and in fact that her child is actually _my_ child. Okay, not really my child cuz I never actually slept with Kate but that's a minor detail. I can adopt Gunther. That kid can use a good father. In my mind, this is a slam dunk! It's all really great stuff!"

"Jack!"

Jack, finally responded, spinning around looking stunned. "Kate! I didnt know you were standing there."

"I called your name."

"Really? You said Jose?"

"No, I said Jack."

"And yet my name's Jose. Who looks stupid now?"

Both Jack and Kate stared at each other for a while, Jack looking smart and Kate looking... dumb by comparison. The Jack-looking-smart/Kate-looking-dumb dynamic was one of Jack's favorite things about their relationship.  
After a minute, he cracked a smile and welcomed Kate in to sit down while at the same time carrying his baby daughter to the door and, in effect, throwing her out. He saw a possible jate moment in the horizon and he couldn't have anyone disturb it. "Tell your brothers and sister not to bother me for the next five hours," he whispered in Jacka Sayida's ear. "Daddy's trying to get you all a new mommy."

"Sorry to interrupt your conversation," Kate said once Jack was sitting in front of her.  
"Not a conversation," he replied. "An interview."

He showed Kate the transceiver that Jacka Sayida had been holding, the same one that he, Kate and Charlie had retrieved from the cockpit in their first few days on the island.   
"I'm recording the commentary for the biopic DVD of my life I'll be writing, producing, starring in and directing when we get rescued."

Kate's raised her eyebrows. "Really."

"Kate, when we get rescued I'm going to be popular. I mean _really_ popular. You and Sawyer will probably get thrown in jail, and no one's really going to care about Hurley the fat loser or Locke the crazy boar killer. I'm the best looking guy on the island. The world's going to want to see the story of my life. The hero's story."  
To the world's discredit, this was probably true.

Kate could only stare at Jack, wondering what the hell was wrong with him, and he confidently stared back at her, giving off the impression that there was absolutely nothing wrong with _him_. If she was confused about something then that was just her own fault for not understanding his genius.  
She hated when he looked at her like that.

"I just came to thank you," Kate began. "For taking care of Gunner earlier? Sawyer told me what you did."  
"He told you I saved Gunther's life," Jack said matter-of-factly  
"_Gunner_," Kate corrected, nonplused.   
"Right, whatever, look," Jack continued, "I know why you're here."  
"I just told you why."  
"You've probably been feeling neglected by me."  
"No..."  
"Now that Alex is in the picture you're probably jealous that I'm spending more time with her rather than stalking you like I normally would be."

There he was again, staring at her like there was absolutely nothing wrong with him.  
"Look Jack–"

"It's Jose. And I know you cant actually say those things to me, that you love me, because Sawyer would get mad, but it's okay. I already know that you love me.""Jose, I don't lo–"  
"Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh," Jack said, pressing his index finger against her lips. "You'll ruin it."

"Ruin what!" Kate asked, moving her face away from his fingers. As she watched him blissfully close his eyes in ecstacy she realized exactly what he was thinking, finally clearing the fog of confusion that hovered every time Jack spoke to her.

"Don't tell me this is a jate moment."

Jack's eyes shot open. Did he hear her right? Did the love of his life just acknowledge that they were sharing the most intimate of moments called jate? 

"Because this isnt a jate moment," she continued.

Jack ignored that part.

He was so caught up in this best of jate moments (he made a mental note to include a Best of Jate Moments feature on his DVD) that he inexplicably ran out in the middle of his jate moment to tell the first person he saw that he was having a jate moment.  
And even though there were a ton of people roaming around the beach he decided to close his eyes and run blindly into the jungle so that the first person he saw was Sawyer.

Jack's guess that Sawyer was in the jungle chopping wood was right on. After Kate had decided to go thank Jack, Sawyer left Gunner with Sun and Soon-Yi and decided to finish relieving the stress that he'd started to relieve on Charlie's teeth by wielding his big manly axe.

As he swung the axe down he heard some rustling in the trees and immediately stopped, on guard. He never for one minute believed Jack's threat that the Others would come after him if he didnt participate in the play, but if they ever did show up and kidnap him again he was ready for them.

"I ain't afraid of you!" He shouted to no one in particular, balancing the axe on his shoulder. "I got a big manly axe with me!" He listened closely but heard nothing. For some reason that seemed even worse than hearing something. "You better not kill me!" He swallowed hard, turning his head in every direction and trying to ignore the perspiration beading on his forehead. "If you kill me my girl'll burn your houses down!"

Now he could definitely hear someone running towards him and there was no ignoring the fear bubbling his gut. "I don' wanna die!" he cried.

And just when he thought it'd be Zeke coming through the bushes, he saw Jack emerge, sweaty, weak, out of breath.

"Oh you," Sawyer said. "What the hell do you want."  
Jack had run so fast and had bumped into so many trees on the way that all he could do now was double over, plant his palms on his knees, and try to catch his breath. When he tried to speak he realized he couldn't say more than a word. Really. His lungs were about to explode. That's how fast he ran.  
But he wasnt going to let that stop him.

"Kate!"

Sawyer dropped his axe and grabbed a fistful of Jack's shirt. "Is there something wrong with Kate?" that fear in his gut started resurfacing again.

"Jate moment," Jack exhaled.  
"_What?_"   
"Me," he gulped. "Kate... Jate."  
"Speak English!"

Taking in a huge mouthful of air, and feeling light-headed in the process, Jack finally had enough wind in him to try to say something in a full sentence. And he used that opportunity to say, "We're going to have a jaby."

Sawyer let him go, starting to feel some of the confusion that Kate was so familiar with. "What the hell's a _jaby_?"

Jack had to explain. "Jack... Kate... Jate... Baby... Jaby." He could only explain using the minium amount of words but he had to get his point across, make sure Sawyer understood everything he'd come there to tell him.

"She... loves...me...We...we're going to have...Jex."

Sawyer was starting to piece all of it together now. Jaby, Jex, Jate. He had almost forgotten all about 'Jate' what with Ana Lucia discarding the Jate button that used to hang over her breast for Libby's hand there in it's stead. 

Sawyer figured now was probably as good a time as ever to relieve the rest of his pent-up stress on Jack.

As Jack tried to compose himself, Sawyer calmly grabbed his shirt again and formed a fist.  
"You finally given me a good enough reason to beat the livin' sht outta ya, Doc."  
In one breath Jack responded, "Other!"

Sawyer, confused yet again, followed Jack's glance and turned around just in time for an Other to slam the butt of his rifle into Sawyer's forehead.

As Sawyer fell to the ground, Jack- miraculously- managed to say, in one breath, "Jateisworththewait."

TBC!


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15: Point Of Attack  
(The moment in the story at which the writer decides to start the play's action.)**

The first thing Sawyer noticed when he came to was that he was being dragged through the jungle. He could feel the rocks and rough ground graze against his back and looking up he could see a nondescript Other tugging on his bound wrists.

The second thing he noticed was that weighing down one of his feet, was Jack's firm grip.  
He was holding onto Sawyer's shoe because otherwise he wouldnt be moving.  
And if he wasnt moving that meant that the Others werent dragging him through the jungle.  
And if the Others werent dragging him through the jungle that meant they didnt want him.  
And in his mind, he was very sure he was supposed to be dragged through the jungle by the Others.  
Just like Sawyer.

"Don't worry, Sawyer!" Jack was saying, a firece determination in his squinty eyes. "They don't want you! They made a mistake! They really want _me_."

And just as Sawyer was beginning to comprehend what was going on he could hear, "I can fix this!"

It was at this point that Sawyer willed himself back into unconsciousness.

Kate didnt know why Jack had left her in his hut like he did but she wasnt about to wait for him to come back. She would, however, wait for Sawyer, and after picking Gunner up from Sun's hut that's exactly what she did. She knew he'd gone wood-chopping because he told her he was in a broody mood (which automatically translated into an opportunity to chop wood), but she expected him to be back by now.

She waited, with Gunner at her side, for quite a long time. The both of them were outside their hut waiting till it got dark. And while most of the other kids on the island were likely being put to bed at the moment, Gunner was rolling around in the sand and barking loudly, pretending he was Vincent.  
In all of her distracted worry over Sawyer's prolonged absence Kate had given Gunner a box of Dharma cookies and a full bottle of Dharma soda for dinner. She also gave him some sugar packets. As a result the three year-old was barking and rolling around more loudly and feverishly than he otherwise would've been.

"Would you shut that kid up?!" Ana Lucia yelled. 

Ana had stomped her way over to Kate, carrying two of her kids in each arm. "I'm trying to put these kids to sleep!

Gunner barked.  
"Do you know how hard it is to put kids to sleep when they're used to getting a performance of the macarena by their father as a bedtime ritual?" she went on. "Not only does Jack disappear on me, now I gotta listen to your kid scream at the top of his lungs."  
Consequently, Josefina was screaming at the top of her lungs.

"Jack's missing?" Kate asked, alert. She had been distracted all along, not even really noticing her son bouncing off the walls (or the sand, as it was), but she was suddenly alarmed, immediately linking Jack's disappearance to Sawyer's. "How long has he been gone?"

"Does it look like I keep his schedule?" Ana asked, annoyed.  
"It's just that Sawyer's been gone for a while too and-"  
She was interupted by Ana's grunt. Actually it was probably a condescending chuckle but it came out more like a grunt. "I'm not surprised."

Kate sat back and rolled her eyes. "Sawyer didn't leave me, Ana," she said, wisely figuring out what Ana was getting at.

"Sure he didn't." She smiled. "Just shut your kid up."

She stomped back off towards her hut where Libby was waiting to tryout her dance moves for the quads so that they'd fall asleep. (This would end up haunting them for a long time to come).

Kate brought the tips of her fingers to her lips to engage in her unconventional prenatal habit of biting her nails. Now she was more worried (read: paranoid) than ever.

Gunner stopped rolling around in the sand to come stand, or more appropriately bounce, beside his mother. "Do I sound like a dog?" he asked excitedly.

Kate smiled and nodded. She wondered if Gunner even understood that his father was missing and that Ana and probably everyone else at the camp thought he'd left them.

"Where's Daddy?"he suddenly asked, answering her question.

Kate looked at her little boy, seeing the confusion in his eyes. In that moment she was determined to hold her own and not cry. No matter how many questions Gunner asked about his missing dad Kate wouldnt cry.

"Daddy's just out chopping wood, Honey."  
The boy thought a minute. "A lot of wood?"  
"Yes, lots," Kate responded.

"Did he die?"  
"Of course not, Gunner!"  
"Is he gonna come home?""He'll be back very soon, Sweetie."  
"Is he gonna read me a story?"  
"Of course he is, GunGun."  
"Can we go swimming when he comes back?"  
"Sure thing, little guy."

"Can I have more soda?"

At this question Kate started to weep.  
She hugged Gunner tightly and freely cried on his shoulder, again not realizing what a traumatic experience it would be for Gunner to see him mother cry.

But Gunner was a strong kid. Channeling his father and remembering what he'd say in a situation like this, Gunner patted his mother's back saying, "Mommy, don't cry."

This only caused Kate to cry and hug him even harder.  
She also gave him another bottle of soda.

Sawyer regained consciousness again and this time he realized that he was tied to a tree, in much the same way he'd been tied the time Sayid and Jack decided to torture him for kicks. It took him only another second to realize that Jack was tied to the opposite side of the very same tree. He found this out because whenever Jack struggled against his restraints Sawyer was the one who felt the ropes dig into him.

But Jack was persistent. Struggling against his restraints was of no use to an average man, but he was sure if _he_ pulled on them long enough, they would unravel.

"Stop squirming, Jack," a voice echoed in the darkness.

Jack responded by muttering something unintelligible.

"What did you say, Jack? If you want to talk, spit the apple out of your mouth. It's not a gag, we gave it to you a couple of hours ago when you said you were hungry."

Jack had been both biting the apple and struggling against it the entire time. He spit the apple out and it made a soft thud against the ground.

"Dobby?" he asked. Jack's vision had blurred on account of all the crying he'd been doing and so he couldnt clearly distinguish the face of his captor. From what he did see however, he believed the man before him was actually the famous house elf from The Harry Potter books. Dobby was Jack's favorite character so seeing him was actually sort of a relief.

But as his vision cleared up, he realized it was not Dobby, but the man they knew as Henry Gale.  
"Whadya want now?" Sawyer asked, more annoyed than anything.

"What do you want with me?!" Jack yelled. "And why did you bring Sawyer? Are you going to torture him until I talk?" At these last words, his expression softened, his eyes lighting up like a Christmas tree. "Because I just might…"

"You are here, Jack, because you held onto Sawyer while we dragged him through the jungle," Henry said patiently. "And we did not send you back because you whined and complained until we tied you to the tree. Why you wanted to be stripped naked and tied to a tree trunk with your friend Sawyer here, is anyone's guess, but who am I to argue with the director?" 

This was how Sawyer found out that Jack was naked. It was also what rekindled his desired to be freed from the restraints immediately.

"Let me go!" He shouted, feebly, now squirming against the ropes too.

Henry Gale walked around, ignoring Jack and addressed Sawyer directly, while crouching so that they were eye-level.  
"Now James, what's this I hear about you not wanting to be in Jack's play? Don't you like the   
theater?"

"I ain't no actor, Keibler. Theater is for wusses and fairies." He stated matter-of-factly. A moment later he turned his head, hiding his eyes which darted anxiously to each side.

"Really?" Henry said. "Because a little birdy told me you put on a fab-ulous performance as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream."

Sawyer stared right at him, unblinking. "I don't know what you're talkin' about."

But of course he knew exactly what he was talking about. When Sawyer was a freshman in high school he had signed up for the drama club, thinking he'd meet depressed artsy girls who'd be more than willing to bang a horny ninth grader. It was a pretty stupid plan as no girl typically wanted anything to do with a horny ninth grader. Instead, what Sawyer found was a love of theater.

As a 14 year-old thespian, James Ford had his breakout role playing the part of Puck, the mischievous fairy, in A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was in his costume as Puck, donning a puffy white shirt, tight pink tights and sporting a few sporadically-placed braids in his hair, that the older kids in his school made fun of him and occasionally beat him up. They also disparagingly called him "Jimmy The Actor Boy." It was his first nickname.

"What was it that they called you?" Henry went on. "Jimmy the actor boy? Isnt it in fact the reason you quit school?"

He quit school because he couldnt take all the taunting. And he promised himself he'd never act again. It was only after he became a drop-out that he turned into the tough kid from the wrong side of the tracks. But Sawyer didnt answer Henry.

"Or was it the tap dancing?" The Other went on.

Sawyer was also an accomplished tap dancer. And for good reason he wasnt going to talk about that either.

The only thing he said at this point was, "Where are you getting your info?"

"Um, your Aunt Meg told me."  
"Meg isn't my aunt. She's just a crazy old lady."

"Or is she?" Henry asked suggestively, cocking an eye-brow, eyes bulging.

"Torture Sawyer all you want!" Jack interjected. "I'm not talking… yet."

"Could you put that apple back in his mouth?"

Alex stood at the treeline looking out at Kate and Gunner. Kate was sitting in the airplane chair, looking out at the dark ocean while Gunner ran circles around their hut. Now he was pretending he was Kate and he'd just robbed a bank and the cops were after him.

As Alex watched them she went over in her mind the perfect way to tell Kate that Sawyer had been taken by the Others. She didn't want to upset her, so tact would definintely be needed.

With nimble feet, she agilely sprinted toward Kate's back, launched herself over the airplane chair and covered Kate's eyes with her hands, screaming out, "guess who!?"

Kate took Alex's hands out of her eyes- still moist from the cry she'd had a little earlier- and turned to look at the girl. "This isnt a good time, Alex," Kate said in a small voice.

"Oh," Alex said in her own small voice, mimicking Kate's. "Well, I just came to see how you were, since you know – that thing with Sawyer."

"What thing with Sawyer?"

Gunner now ran right up to Alex and shouted, "And then Jason said, 'You better kill me, Maggie!'" (Kate had spared no details in the retelling of her bank-robbing story to Gunner. After all, details were very important to both of Gunner's parents). After this random outburst, Gunner proceeded to run around the hut some more.  
"Who're Jason and Maggie?" Alex asked in an awed whisper, certainly imagining them to be a romantic couple of some kind.

"What thing with Sawyer?" Kate repeated.

"The thing with Sawyer being kidnapped by the Others," she stated matter-of-factly. "Wait, if I'm one of them, shouldn't I be calling _you_ the Others?" Alex's nose crinkled up as she thought about it.

"He was _what_?" 

"Kidnapped."

Kate's mouth fell agape. "What? Where is he?"

Alex was not answering her. She seemed distracted suddenly. Kate followed her gaze and noticed that she was staring at her breasts.

"Alex! Eyes up here!"

"Sorry," Alex responded, snapping out of it. "It's just that they're so... nice."

Kate grabbed the girl's shoulders. "Where, is, Sawyer?"

"Don't worry, he'll be fine. They're not going to torture him or anything," she said reassuringly, rubbing Kate's shoulder. Predictably, her hand slowly trailed down toward Kate's breast. "They're gonna try to convince him to do the play or they'll kill us all! Wait, I meant we'll kill you all! Yeah, that's right. It was sort of my idea actually." 

"Yours!?"

Too shocked to speak, even to move, Kate just stared off into space.

"Did you know Sawyer can tapdance?" Alex asked, smelling Kate's hair.

Henry had given Sawyer some time to think. But he unfortunately couldnt get any thinking done with the racket Jack was making.

There was a chain inexplicably dangling from one of the branches above Jack's head. Jack managed to untangle one of his arms from the restraints and instead of using it to try to untie the ropes he grabbed onto the chain and started pulling on it, almost methodically.

It was like he was keeping time by yanking on that chain. And every time he yanked, the sound caused a pounding in Sawyer's head.  
"When we get out of this thing, Jackass, I'm gonna kill you," Sawyer said through gritted teeth.  
All Jack would say was, "I've got a plan."

"Stop pulling on the chain, Jack," Henry said.

"It's Jose! And do you think I'm stupid?!"  
He yanked on the chain even harder. "HUH?!" he shouted. "DO YOU?!" He yanked on the chain so hard this time that the branch came down with it and knocked Jack over the head. He blacked out.

"Finally," Henry muttered simultaneously. "Now, Sawyer. Have you made a decision?"  
"I don't act no more."

Henry smiled. He reached behind him, into the back pocket of his khakis, and whisked out a portable folding chair. Positioning it in front of Sawyer, he took a seat.

"I know your camp has a lot of questions about who we are. I'm sure you all ask yourselves why we enjoy musical theater so much. Why we kidnap you from time to time. Why we love children more than any normal adults should love children. In fact, I'm certain many of the women in your camp lay in bed at night thinking, 'Gosh, that man known only as Henry Gale to us sure is god looking.' Some of the men, too. I'm sorry to inform you that I cant answer any of your questions about us. I can only tell you that we are so desperate for new stage productions that we're forcing all of you to put on a performance for us. And I can also tell you that we're so desperate we will kill if we don't get what we want." When he said, 'kill' his lips formed an eerie smile.

Sawyer looked at him defiantly.

"LOCKE!" Kate shouted.

She would've gone looking for the Others but she knew she couldn't leave Gunner. And she'd never let Alex babysit. She could only call on the camp's most revered... okay, the camp's only hunter to go find Sawyer.

Locke, as always, was standing ten feet away. "You. Called?" he said.

"Sawyer's been taken by the Others! You need to go find him," she explained.

"I know," Locke said, smiling warmly. "Couldn't help. Overhearing your conversation. "I'll go find. Charlie and we'll. Go into the Jungle right. Away."

"Can Jose come with us?" Alex asked. Alex must've thought she'd be automatically included in the search party. She also didnt know that Jack was with the Others.

Locke looked Alex over and then sniffed, trying to gauge what side she was on. Satisfied, he pulled a note out of his back pocket, written on a coconut husk.

"I found this in. The jungle."

Alex read it out loud. "Taken by the Others. Be back soon. Love, Jose. P.S. If Kate is reading this, smell the husk."

Alex took a whiff, inhaling deeply. "It's his scent. He must've rubbed the coconut husk all over his body before they took him."

She offered it to Kate who quickly declined. She also gagged slightly. Then she noticed something – the note was written in red. "Blood?" she asked, worried.

Locke took the husk, examining it. After a few minutes of licking, "marker," he proclaimed grimly and continued tasting.

Coincidently, Henry had taken one of Sawyer's markers out of his pocket and was now holding it in front of him. It seemed like the idea of "killing you all" really didnt threaten Sawyer as much as he'd hoped. But now that he had one of Sawyer's markers in his hand, he felt he had the upper hand.

"Give that back to me," Sawyer demanded.   
"Not until you agree to do the play," Henry answered him. 

"Never!"Henry uncapped the marker. "Fine!"

And that was how Sawyer agreed to be in Jack's play.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16: Break a Leg (Part 1):  
Said to wish a theater actor good luck**

They all stood at the tree line, preparing to march past the trees for Sawyer and Jack were surely just beyond them, ten or twenty miles away, locked in cages or tied together or possibly dangling above the ground in an awkward situation.

Kate had asked for Locke's help in finding Sawyer sometime after nightfall, but by the time Locke got his search party ready (Charlie, Alex and two other random islanders who Locke didn't recognize, but somehow knew his name) it was already morning. Actually it was afternoon. So Sawyer and Jack were probably already dead.

Sawyer being dead at the hands of the Others was a thought that had haunted Kate more times than she could count. But everything always seemed to turn out alright no matter what tragedy befell them on the island, save for the occasional violent and mysterious death.

Despite having this insight, Kate cried.  
She cried for Sawyer's life, she cried for her life without Sawyer, and she cried for the lives of Gunner and Bump without their father. Also, she was hormonal so she was pretty much crying at the moment because it was just that time of day. 

Seeing Kate cry had caused Alex to cry as well. Everyone thought she was crying because her "mentor" Jose was gone but it was actually because Kate looked so pretty crying that the younger girl was trying to emulate her. It also gave Alex a chance to bond with her over something they had in common.

She cried on Kate's shoulder, who didn't seem to mind. That would change soon when Alex's hand would start to wander, but for the moment it was just two girls having a good cry. Until Charlie started to cry on Alex's shoulder – then it was three. No one knew why he cried. Maybe he had just gotten his period.

"Are we all. Ready to," Locke said. "Go?"

"I'm coming with you," Kate said. She took a deep breath and instinctively waited for someone to object. And then she remembered that Jack wasn't there. She instantly felt better.  
"The Others like me."

Locke smiled and patted his shiny head with both hands as if he was playing the bongos. "And how do you know. The Others. Like you, Kate?"

Kate was absolutely certain that the Others liked her and she had proof too. "They give me dresses."

This was true. When they were keeping her in the cages they'd given her a dress and a flower print top. And every Chanukah since then she awoke to a gift-wrapped box lying next to her pillow that usually contained another flowery dress in it. Once there was a pantsuit five sizes too big, but she'd learned to forgive them for that. And Ana enjoyed the pantsuit.

"They give you dresses?" Charlie said, his mouth, now missing a tooth thanks to Sawyer, caused a slight whistle whenever he talked. "How come you get dresses? The rest of us never get any bloody dresses!"

"We need to. Stop arguing! We are wasting too. Much time!" Locke interjected. "Whoever wants. To come can." he paused. "Come!" Paused again. "But we better. Get. A move on right after I meditate. Inside my. Sweat Lodge."

Locke had built his spiritual teepee before taking off on the search for guidance and possibly even enlightenment. It had taken him the better part of eight hours.

"And Kate!" He shouted. "You should put on. A sweater. You look like. A whore."

Coincidently, Kate was wearing the flower print top the Others had given her some years ago. She'd grown to like it.

As she watched Locke head toward the teepee, Kate began to regret her decision to seek his help. The only way things were going to get done was if she did them herself.

"Come on, Gunner! We're going to find your father."

And Gunner. Herself and Gunner.

Just as the boy ran over to his mother and grabbed hold of her hand, they heard some rustling in the trees. It sounded like someone was coming right towards them. Charlie quickly jumped behind Locke and made himself small. Locke drew a large knife out and prepared to throw it, but hesitated, remembering the time he had narrowly missed Hurley. And the time he had accidentally killed Bill. And Jeanie. And some other people who's names escaped him.

It was Jack walking out of the jungle. Except he wasn't so much walking as he was crawling on the ground, digging his elbows into the sand the way an army soldier would when going under barbedwire if his pants were on fire.

Also, he was naked from the waist up and his lower half was only covered by a ratty old potato sack. "My legs!" he screamed.

What was wrong with Jack's legs? It seemed the only one who cared was Alex, who ran up to (or, down to) Jack to try and help him up.  
But Jack stopped her.

"No, I don't need any help. I can do this myself," Jack grunted, and continued to waddle on the ground. "They may have taken my legs, but they'll never take my good looks!"

In fact, they hadn't taken his legs at all and everyone could clearly see them moving around in the potato sack but no one said anything.

Kate looked up expectantly, hoping that Sawyer would be right behind Jack, also skimpily dressed if less disgustingly so.

But unlike the crawling, scantily clad Jack, Sawyer walked onto the beach completely naked. Except for the pudding. He was completely covered from head to toe in delicious chocolate pudding. Though he did have his jeans with him, instead of wearing them he held them in a bunched up heap against his nether regions. Possibly to protect the weak-hearted. 

He trudged out of the bushes as surly as ever, marched right past everyone, stopped in front of Kate and proclaimed, "I don't want to talk about it."

Ignoring him, Kate threw herself at him, smearing herself with pudding in the process.

"Daddy brought pudding!" Gunner screamed and wrapped his arms around Sawyer's leg.

"That's right sweetie, pudding for everyone tonight!" Kate exclaimed.

"Got you something else too," Sawyer said. He fumbled around his jeans till he found a pocket and then retrieved what was inside it. "You hungry?" he asked, holding up a marker.

"A marker?"

Sawyer realized his mistake and hastily put the marker back inside the pocket. "No, not a marker," he muttered. "This." What he retrieved this time was a fish biscuit. "You hungry?" he repeated again, the confident smile once again on his face.

Kate's face lit up at the sight of the fish biscuit. It was one of those weird things about her, the fact the she actually liked fish biscuits, but Sawyer didn't question it. He did it all just to see that look in her eye as she munched on the treat.

She took a few eager bites and then proceeded to hug Sawyer again. All he could do was stand there and rub pudding out of his eye. Out of the eye with considerably less pudding in it, he could see a woman approaching him, an accusatory expression on her face.

"Sawyer, where were you?! How could you just disappear on us like that!? When were you planning on telling us you were gone?! We were so worried!" 

Everyone turned to look at the person who was screaming at Sawyer. It was one of the random islanders Locke had collected for his search party. But nobody recognized her. Least of all Sawyer.  
"Who the hell are you?" he asked.  
"It's me, Niki," she said. She pulled her sandy blonde hair back to reveal a name tag on her shirt. It read, _I'm Niki_.

"We thought you were dead," said another random guy with a faint Italian accent. He wore a name tag that read, _I'm Paolo_.

The name tags may have been strange but they seemed to be born of necessity rather than as an expression of their wearers' eccentricities.

There was a moment of silence amongst everyone present until Kate broke it.

"I've never seen them before in my life," she whispered in Sawyer's direction, never taking her eyes off these new people.

"We've been here all along," "Niki" explained. She sounded as if she'd said this many, many times before.

"I think the. Whore may be right," Locke said. "They're. Others. And we all know it!"

"I just helped you build that Sweat Lodge, Locke," "Paolo" said.

"No you. Didn't," the older man responded. "That was Boone."

"We were here when Boone died!" "Niki" whined. "We were at the raft launching. Michael almost shot me in the hatch after he got Libby. We helped put out that forest fire you started, Kate. And don't you remember we were taken by the Others with you once?" She asked. "Paolo and I were put in cages right beside yours... we saw you two..."

"We saw you make love in the cages," "Paolo" finished for her.  
"You tryin' to make a fool of me and Kate, Prettyboy?" Sawyer asked, stepping up threateningly.  
"We are not lying!" he explained. "I saw you..." Paolo moved closer to Sawyer and began whispering in his ear, all the while making obscene gestures with his hands like an especially dirty mime, trying to better explain himself. "That was amazing what you did with her legs," he finally finished.  
Then the boys chuckled and high-fived.

Sawyer smiled slyly and turned back to Kate. "He was definitely there."

"Nicole! Paul! Come help me!" Jack shouted from the ground.

Though he clearly did not know who Niki and Paolo were (evident by the fact that he'd just called them Nicole and Paul) Jack still wanted their attention. In fact he wanted everyone's attention. He realized that since his return he'd gotten very little of it.  
Niki and Paolo worked as one to help Jack sit down on a crate.

"What happened to you out there?" Alex asked, rushing to help him now that he was accepting outside help. She gave him her water bottle, which he gladly took and poured over his head. Not to cool himself off but to appear more sweaty.

"A lot happened out there," he said. He turned to squint at Sawyer. "A whole lot."  
"We don't gotta bore them with the story," Sawyer said, laughing nervously.

Except Sawyer never laughed nervously. And Kate knew this. He also never came home naked covered in pudding. Suddenly she wanted to know exactly what had happened out there in the jungle. 

"The Others let us go over twelve hours ago," Jack said.   
"Wowwwwwwwww," Alex whispered, already completely awed by this story and Jack himself. "So they took you to a place 12 hours from here?"

Actually, Sawyer and Jack were only taken about 45 minutes away from where they stood now. Jack realized that if he were to explain this he'd look really stupid. So he didn't.

"We were only supposed to be taken for 5 minutes," he began again. "But instead we were there for 52 hours."

This was just a flat out lie.

"If you're gonna tell the story, tell it right," Sawyer said.

And this is what actually happened...

**Chapter 16, Part 2**

When the Others decided to let them go Jack was still naked. (They had burned all of his clothes. The sweat may have had something to do with it). To replace his old clothes the Others offered him some of their finest funeral attire; beachy pants and tunics, all in white. But Jack refused those, saying only that white made him look a bit pudgy. He instead opted for, and insisted on, the potatosack in which the funeral clothes came. The Others were confused but nonetheless obliged.

Sawyer and Jack walked through the jungle in silence for a couple of hours, trying to ignore each other as best they could. This became increasingly difficult when Jack began humming the theme song to Batman.  
Over and over again.

Sawyer was ready to let it pass but by hour two he was collecting sharp sticks with which to stab Jack. When he got back to camp he'd just tell everyone that the Others had killed him. Or maybe he'd tell them the truth. Didn't matter to him.

"Wasn't Superman the best?" Jack asked in between hums.

"What's Superman gotta do with anything?"

Jack chuckled and continued walking. "Perhaps you didn't hear the song I was humming. It's the theme to the Superman movies. Superman's the best comic book super hero. And the most like me."

Sawyer stopped what he was doing (sharpening a twig with his pocket knife) and looked up. "You been hummin' the tune to Batman this whole time, dumbass."

Jack laughed again. "No I havent."  
"Nananananananana Batman!" Sawyer sang, despite himself. "That's Batman."

Jack looked more serious now. As if maybe he was starting to doubt himself. And _doubt_ was a feeling that Jack rarely got to experience. Or _let_ himself experience. "No it's not," he said.  
"Fine, it's not," Sawyer agreed. "Whatever."

They commenced their silent walk through the jungle until Jack shouted "DAMNIT!" His voice carried into the trees.  
Sawyer smiled.

"I will fight you!" Jack shouted. "I will fight you to the death!" He got teary now. "For _her_."

"Would you put your sack back on, I'm not gonna fight you!" Sawyer shot back. "Not when you're naked, anyway."

But Jack did not heed Sawyer and took off his sack and threw it to the ground and yelled.

And then he cried.

Sawyer stood in front of a tree to take a whiz.

And he was about to take that whiz when out of the corner of his eye he could see Jack approaching the very same tree. Jack stood right next to him. Then he dropped his potato sack to pee as well. Sawyer promptly zipped up.

"Can't you find your own tree?" Sawyer asked. "We're in the middle of the goddamn jungle."  
"Don't let me intimidate you, Sawyer." 

And by "me" Jack actually meant something else. He was very proud of this _something else_. So proud in fact that when he encountered an opportunity to show something else off he went for it. It was the reason he'd chosen the very same tree Sawyer had and why he'd so immodestly dropped sack.

Regardless, Sawyer found another tree, much, much farther away. Which was just as well for Jack because he didn't really want Sawyer to see him pee anyway. Mostly because Jack didn't pee a whole lot. Instead of peeing his body was just used to sweating. But in order to keep up appearances Jack had become an expert at simulating the sound of running water whenever he was peeing around other men.

So Jack tried to recreate the sounds of a raging waterfall while the tree he was standing in front of got the whole of two drops.

"What the hell's that noise?" Sawyer hollered.  
"It's just me... peeing!" Jack responded.  
"Sounds like Donald Duck!"

Jack cut back on the spitting and decided to change the subject.

"Do you know what scabies is, Sawyer?" He was still shouting because of how far away Sawyer had chosen to stand.

Not that he needed another reason to be, but Sawyer was annoyed.  
"You conducting another eye exam, Doc?" he asked. "Because, correct me if I'm wrong, but ain't that your favorite time to ask me about diseases I could have? May wanna wait till we get back to camp. You'll have more of an audience!"

"Scabies is a rash caused by the itch mite," Jack said, effectively ignoring Sawyer and putting on his best doctor voice. "It's sometimes associated with kids that aren't kept clean."  
Finished with his business, he picked up his potato sack again and assumed a very pompous walk towards Sawyer.

"What the hell are you gettin' at?"

Jack put his hands on his waist and squinted. "If and when Kate and I have babies, they'll be called jabies," he stated. "By that same logic do you know what the babies you produce with Kate are called?"

"You better b–"

"Skabies," Jack said. "Just something to think about."

"You know what I find strange, Doc?"

Jack rolled his eyes and clenched his ass cheeks. "How could I possibly know what you find strange, Sawyer?"

"The Others told us we'd be back at our camp in 20 minutes if we ran," Sawyer explained, a faux-calm tone in his voice. "45 minutes tops if we took our time. But you know what I noticed when I looked at my here watch? I noticed that it's been close to SIX HOURS since they let us go." The faux-calmness was completely gone now, replaced by a crazed anger. "So you better have a damn good reason why we're not home yet cuz I been following you this whole time!"

"And you should be following me," Jack stated. "I'm a playwright."

This was the exact same thing he'd told Sawyer as soon as the Others let them go close to six hours ago. Sawyer had no choice but to follow Jack since he insisted on walking three steps ahead of him the whole time.

"Then where the hell are we and how come we ain't back yet!?"

"We're close," was all Jack would say, not having the patience or the energy to fully explain his plan to Sawyer. And there was a plan. There was always a plan.

"I have a plan."

"A Plan!" Sawyer scoffed. "The village people back there only gave us one bottle of water and _somebody_ decided to down the whole thing in the first ten minutes! Where's your plan now?"

"I need to replenish myself!" Jack yelled. And then he muttered, "do you know how much I sweat?"

"Then gimmie whatever food you got. I'm hungry."  
"I already ate my fish biscuit," Jack said. "Didnt they give you one?"  
"I'm savin' mine for Kate."

"Well that's not really my problem, is it?"  
Then he unclenched his ass cheeks.

"I'll adopt Bummer and raise him as my own. As for the child Kate's going to have, well, it'll just grow up believing I'm its real father." Sawyer dug his knee even further into the back of Jack's neck. "Fine! Fine! We'll name it after you!" Jack yelped. "...But we'll call it Jack."

Sawyer sat on a log and watched Jack. There wasn't much he could do now. No food, no idea how the hell to get back, no books, and no guns. He was stuck.  
And it seemed that Jack was stuck too. He had been circling the same tree for the last 20 minutes.

"Lost something?" Sawyer asked. "An eye contact? Your mind?"

"It's supposed to be here!"

"You keep saying that. _What's_ supposed to be here?"

Jack marched up to Sawyer and shoved a piece of paper in his face. "I found this in my sack. It's a map to something and it leads right here but there's nothing here!"

Sawyer looked over the map. It was a simple piece of paper, blank except for the word, "start," a squiggly line across the page, and then an "x."

"This why we been runnin' around the jungle for 10 hours?"  
"Yes!"  
"You mean to tell me the Others- who we've come to understand love playin' mind games with us- gave you a map that leads nowhere and you followed it because you had nothing better to do?"  
"Yes!"

Sawyer took a deep breath and smiled. This may have all been very bad news but he at least had the mind to be thankful for all the excuses- however small they might be- to beat the hell out of Jack. He slowly stood up and curled his fingers into fists. "Now which side of your face is it that you think looks best on camera?"

"The right side really catches the light," Jack responded, oblivious.  
Sawyer nodded and made a note to start with the right.

"What's that?" Jack said, looking past Sawyer's shoulder. Both men turned and saw a wall hidden behind some shrubbery. "That must be it!" Jack exclaimed. "The treasure!"

It looked pretty much just like the hatch looked when Locke dug it up, only this structure was above aground.

It seemed like Jack had gotten a little too excited at the site of this "treasure" because already he started disrobing again.

"Would you quit getting naked? This could look really bad if people get wind of this."  
"I can't climb it in my sack, Sawyer."  
"Oh, I'll do it!" Sawyer fumed. He found a small ladder at the perimeter and climbed it, but instead of finding a hatch door, he found himself standing on the ledge of an above-ground pool. 

"Well?" Jack called up."It's a pool! 'Cept this aint water. Looks like...," he sniffed, afraid to touch the contents, "chocolate pudding?"

"That's right, Sawyer!" a voice bellowed from the shadows. "You're a perceptive one."

Sawyer looked up and saw that Zeke, otherwise known as Tom, was standing on the opposite end of the ledge.  
"What the hell do you want now?"Sawyer sighed, rolling his eyes.

"Who said that?" Jack asked. "Are there people up there? Is it a pool party?"  
He began disrobing again.

"It's Zeke," Sawyer called back. "I thought you guys let us go."  
"Oh we did," Tom drawled. "But Jack decided to cross into my territory."  
"It's Jose!" Jack corrected.

Tom started walking the ledge like an expert tightrope walker. "This, is not your pudding pool," he said, approaching Sawyer. "This is _my_ pudding pool."  
"Fine! You can have it!" Sawyer responded. "I just want to get the hell out of here."

"Why do you have a pudding pool?!" Jack shouted up towards the two men, unnecessarily prolonging the conversation. Tom reached Sawyer and stood beside him. He looked down at Jack.  
"It's a pool," he explained, "full of pudding!" Both Jack and Sawyer stared at him blankly. "You don't get to judge me."

"If that's your pudding pool how come it isnt on your own island?" Jack asked.  
"Backup," Tom said simply.  
"Oh."

"Now Jack, the question I'm going to ask you is this; can you live with the fact that I killed your best friend because you trespassed onto my pudding pool?"

"Whoa now, hold on a minute," Sawyer pleaded, holding out his palms and inching away from Tom. "Who you callin' his best friend?"

"Relax, Sawyer," Tom chuckled. Then he whispered, "I'm just tryin' to scare Jose. I'd never kill you." With that he winked and slapped Sawyer on the ass. Sawyer subsequently fell into the pudding pool.  
"Whoops," Tom said.

Okay, so maybe Tom slapped Sawyer a little too hard. And maybe he chose Sawyer's ass to slap because he _liked_ Sawyer's ass. A lot. In fact, he'd admired it for years ever since he saw him bend down to haul the rocks back when they captured him. But the easiest way to explain Tom's facination with Sawyer's ass was to compare it with Alex's obsession with Kate's boobs.  
In short, Sawyer was Tom's type. And the opportunity to get Sawyer covered in pudding was an opportunity too good to pass up.

"You okay there, buddy?"

The pool was deep and Sawyer had been completely submerged in pudding. It was thick and every time he moved he felt like he was in quicksand. It was hard to understand what sort of pleasure Zeke could possibly derive from a pool like this, and yet when Sawyer looked at the man for help he looked like the happiest person on earth.

"Don't try to swim, you'll only make it worse," Tom warned. "Just take off your shirt and toss it here, I'll pull you in."

"And you actually took off your clothes for Tom?" Kate asked.

She, and all the other survivors had been dubiously listening to Jack's story all this time. None of them seemed to believe a word of it, though.

"Just my shirt," Sawyer retorted. "He took it from me and ran away with it."  
"Then what about your pants?" she asked.  
"I couldn't walk in them, they were covered in pudding."

"You really expect us to believe that?" Charlie asked, as annoying as ever.  
"You think I smeared pudding all over myself for shts and giggles, Tinkerbell?"  
"Oh please," he responded. "Who knows what sorts of sexual escapades you and Kate fancy! I reckon she likes you just fine covered in pudding!" Kate shrugged and nodded. "And you never explained why Jack's legs don't work."

They worked but Jack was willing to give an explanation nonetheless. 

"Sawyer tripped me!" he exclaimed. "I helped him out of the pool and he tripped me!"

But nobody was listening to Jack anymore. The crowd had pretty much dispersed. They were hoping for a much more exciting story about why Sawyer was covered in pudding and why Jack was naked. Some had even formed their own theories, which turned out to be more interesting than the actual facts.

But some people stayed, like Charlie. He liked boring storylines. And Niki and Paolo didn't really have anywhere to go. 

"Well, we're just glad you're safe," "Niki told Sawyer.

Sawyer looked at her blankly. "Who the hell are you?"  
"We're Niki and Paolo! "Niki" said. Paolo pointed to the name tags.

"I've never seen them before in my life," Kate whispered in Sawyer's direction, never taking her eyes off these new people.

Ana Lucia strolled up just in the nick of time to place her arms around Niki and Paolo's shoulders and "escort" them away.

"Where are you taking us?" "Paolo" asked.  
"A much better place," Ana replied.

The pit. She was taking them to the pit.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17: "The book"  
A copy of the script, kept by the Stage Manager, which includes all cues and notes**

"I know she's here!" Jack yelled. "The smell of sushi fills my nostrils with its horrid stench! The horrid stench of redneck sushi! It smells like you, Fordham! Do you have her back there, in the back of the restaurant where all the chefs prepare food for the people who are sitting out here waiting to eat it? Huh?? DO YOU?! Bring her out here now, Fordham! So that I can whisk her away from this horrible place like a knight would when he's rescuing a princess at the end of a fairy tale!"

Jack's eyes were bugging out of his face and beads of sweat appeared on his forehead as if on cue. The yelling and the sweating was enough to garner anyone's attention but it wasn't because he was talking crazy that everyone was staring at Jack. It was because he was rehearsing his play with the rest of the cast. Specifically, he was rehearsing an act which had a lot of dialogue for him to say. So when he said things like, "fills my nostrils with its horrid stench!" he was actually speaking his own lines. Naturally, he was very proud of them.

Everyone else, however, just looked dumbfounded. It seemed that none of the cast members had actually thoroughly read Jack's script and had therefore not known that it was awful. Of course, Sawyer read it. It looked like he was the only one aware of what he was being subjected to. Luckily for him when he agreed to be in the play it was only under the condition that he have a small part- just one line. His role, that of a Mexican waiter, required him to utter the words, "Choo cane getchoo sooshi wid da soy sauce."  
Jack had actually written the Mexican accent into the script.

But the dumbfounded looks on everyone's faces after he finished yelling his lines took on a different meaning for Jack. He assumed they just looked like that because of how much he impressed them.

Jack's time at the hands of the Others had changed him. It was a profound experience being tied to a tree naked and beaten with a tree branch so bad that it knocked him out. In more ways than one he was a new person with new priorities in life. Well, they were mainly the same priorities only now they were much more important to him than they once were. Sure he wanted to be a good father and exhusband, but he also wanted to be a good man. For Kate. And in his mind the path to being a good man was to become the best actor possible. So if he had to choose he'd say that the thing that changed most about him since he got back was his newfound passion for acting.

"You're impressed with me now," he told his onlookers, "but my range as an actor would _blow your sock off_ if I wasn't confined to this wheelchair."

Plus, Jack was in a wheelchair now. Also at the top of the list of things that had changed him most since his encounter with the Others. In his own medical opinion Jack's legs no longer worked. He was a victim, a cripple, an invalid. Of course, all these things made him a serious actor in Jack's opinion. So he dug up that old wheelchair that came with the plane crash and he crawled into it and he cried whenever he heard someone say something like "Oh, I'll just run and get it" or "lets take a walk" or "The Doc can walk, he's just fakin' it to get more attention!" (That last one was Sawyer).

"Locke, it's your line!"

Locke looked over his script briefly and then began wagging his finger at Kate. "Now Kay I. Told you you can't go. Running off in middle of your. Shift you gotta come. Help me in the back."

Sawyer, having read the entire script, opted not to take the James Fordham role so Jack had given it to Locke. Sawyer sat off to the side with the rest of the audience (islanders who had nothing better to do), watching the rehearsal while trying to prefect his Mexican accent.

"Choo," he pronounced under his breath.

"CUT!" Jack yelled. "I need you to be more angry, John. James Fordham is an asshole. I'm just not getting asshole from your performance."

Locke nodded and regarded his script again. He swept his palm over his shiny bald head, attempting to regroup. This time he wagged his finger even harder. He looked to Jack to see if this was better.

"Perfect," Jack said. But just as his did he heard snorting coming from the audience. He turned in their direction. The only people watching the rehearsal were Jin, Sun, Charlie, Hurley, Rose, and Sawyer. And the only one snickering was Sawyer.

"You got a problem with my directing, Sawyer?"  
"Yeah," Sawyer said. "You suck at it."  
"Oh?" Jack said, smiling condescendingly. "And you'd do things differently?"  
"I would."  
"Okay then, Sawyer. Why don't you direct John. Tell him what to do. See how easy it is when you're the one doing it."

Sawyer stood up and walked over to Locke and Kate. "Watch," he told Locke.

Sawyer took Kate's arm and pulled her closer to him until their bodies were only inches apart, the small space between them charged. "Now Kay," he said in a low, controlled voice, turning his face so that his mouth was by her ear. "I told you you can't go running off in middle of your shift." Then he looked at her again, their gazes locked, he seemed to breathe her in, his hand still gripping her. He made her look at him in such a way that she was mesmerized, forgetting about the play or Jack or the audience. She was completely immersed in him, seeing only the dark gleam in his eyes and hearing only his hypnotizing voice. She was enraptured. "You gotta come help me in the back."

Kate nodded slowly, wide-eyed. "Okay," she whispered.  
This small demonstration was met with a deafening silence from the audience. It seemed Kate wasn't the only one swept up in the scene.  
Sawyer was supposed to come off looking like an asshole and Kate was supposed to look hurt and demeaned and yet Sawyer and Kate's chemistry managed to make this small scene 100 times hotter than any of the gag-inducing scenes between Kay and Jose.

Sun's throat suddenly felt dry. Hurley nearly chocked on his popcorn. Charlie clapped.

"Ok, cut!" Jack said. But instead Sawyer and Kate proceeded to make out. "I said CUT!"

Sawyer finally broke it off, a smug smirk on his lips. He went back to his place in the audience while Kate looked blankly after him.

"'Okay' is not in the script, Kate," Jack said. "You were supposed to start crying."

"Right," she responded. "Sorry."

"We'll take it from the top." Jack coughed and then began.

"When I look past your luscious chocolate curls into your sapphire orbs my cheeks fill with warmth ," Jack recited. "I will get you out of this hell hole if my name isnt Jose Manuel Luis Fernando Guadalupe Eduardo Christina Arturo Stuart Diego Montoya Shepardo!"

The stage directions said he had to march up to Kate and sweep her into his arms but what with the wheelchair that was kind of hard to do. But Jack still tried. He turned the wheels at his sides but since it was nearly impossible to properly move in a wheelchair on sand, Alex was there to push him along. She squeezed his shoulder, a sign of her support for his amazing acting.

It was Kate's turn to respond. She held her script at her side, confident that she would be able to remember her line. She mentally prepped herself by thinking that acting was just like lying.

"I trust you, Jose," she said. "I trust that your name is Jose Manuel Luis Fernando Guadalupe Eduardo Arturo Stuart Diego Montoya Shepardo." She breathed a sigh of relief at getting all of that out.

"Where's Christina?" Jack asked, breaking out of character.  
"Christina?" Kate asked.

"It's Guadalupe Eduardo _Christina_ Arturo. You messed up, Kate," he said plainly.  
"Oh," she responded. "Sorry, it's kind of a long name–"  
"You messed up."

"Lay off her, Shakespeare. It's a dumb name!" Sawyer called from the audience.

A tiny, bitter laugh escaped Jack's throat right before his eyes turned cold and glassy. He shook his head and tried to turn his wheelchair around but instead he just stayed in the same place as one wheel moved awkwardly, kicking up sand. He tried turning the wheels harder, tiring the muscles in his arms while Alex ineffectively tried to drag the wheelchair with all of her strength. Nothing happened.

"Alex!" Jack screamed.  
"I'm trying!" the girl helplessly responded.   
"Locke, help Alex!"

Locke raised his eyebrows and slowly shook his head before answering, "No."  
"No?" Jack repeated. "I'm your director! You have to do what I say! Now carry me!"

"There's no reason for that."

The voice of the person who'd spoken those words was unfamiliar and everyone turned to see who it was. Emerging from behind the bushes, in the same way most mysterious people emerged from bushes, was the Other known as Juliet.

There was a calm and collected air about her that made her look misplaced against the mess of trees and crashing waves and the rest of the tropical backdrop. She was wearing a pastel-colored unbuttoned shirt on top of a tank and when she walked over to the "stage" you could see how square her shoulders were. You could also see the taser sticking out of her back pocket and yet no one made a move to drag her off to the infamous pit. This was largely because Ana Lucia was currently taking her daily five hour nap.

She stopped a few feet from Jack, tilted her head slightly and smirked pleasantly.  
"There's no reason for that because you can walk, Jack."

Everyone turned in unison to look at Jack. And there was plenty to look for. For starters, Juliet had said what every else was thinking, effectively standing up to Jack, something that until then only Sawyer ever did. And secondly, even though most of the islanders had never seen Juliet before they all knew of her. Years ago, when Jack returned from his longest stay with the Others to date he'd spent his first week back rolling around on the sand and screaming out the name "JULIET!" as he cried.

No one could figure out if he liked this Juliet or if he hated her. But everyone knew they had some sort of weird relationship. Jack had once compared it to a burger in between two buns. He was the meaty, sweaty substance and Juliet was the fluffy outer cushion, holding him together, absorbing all of his grease (the grease was tears in this analogy) and nurturing him.

He'd almost forgotten all about her. But gosh he really missed her hamburgers.

Jack's face remained expressionless as he looked at her. "Hello Juliet. No, I can't walk. And I go by Jose now."  
"I know." She nodded, a sense of understanding flickering across her features. "You look good as a Jose. But the wheelchair doesn't suit you."

As strange and unexpected as her surprise appearance was it was actually not so random at all. Jack had been pretending he was crippled for long enough (one day) and Alex was absolutely sick of it! They used to be able to do so many things together back when he could walk. They would frolic through the lily fields, perform spirited rain dances, spy on Kate, play golf, chase after Jack Hugo Jr. When he occasionally got a hold of a tub of mayonnaise, do chin ups, and other unmentionable things. But aside from all the things she could no longer do with Jack she still hated seeing him in the wheelchair. He just wasn't as morally superior as he used to be. It was a lot harder to be superior when you had to sit down all the time.

So Alex had secretly planned a sort of intervention. Naturally she solicited the help of Juliet because she knew she could help. Also Juliet looked like Jack's exwife or something so he'd probably listen to her. Alex hated betraying Jack like this but she figured no one would know she was the one who got Juliet to come.

"Who got you to come?" Jack asked Juliet.  
"Alex."

"_Juliet_!" Alex screamed. She ran off to cry somewhere.

"Jack, I know how tempting it is to sit all day. But you can walk.. And your legs work."  
"You don't have any idea what happened to me," Jack said. "I can't walk! Look at me!" He gripped the armrests of the wheelchair and began shaking it violently from side to side apparently trying to emphasize just how much he couldn't walk. This turned out to be a bad idea, however, when the chair fell on its side, taking him with it.

"Dammit." He was splayed out on the sand, immobile, the wheels of the chair spinning over his head. "Alex!" he yelled, twisting his head up so that he didnt get a mouth full of sand. "Alex!"

Alex didn't show up. She was still off crying.

Jack took a deep breath and used all of his upper body strength to throw the chair off of him. Then he stood up and walked back to the chair and sat in it.

"I CAN'T WALK!" He yelled again.

"If you stand up now I'll give you this hamburger."  
Naturally, Juliet had been holding a tray this whole time. She lifted the dish lid from it and revealed an absolutely delicious looking hamburger. "I made it myself."

Jack's eyes shown at the sight of the hamburger as did everyone else's. Nobody had seen a real burger in years. He very much wanted the burger but his resolve did not waver.  
"My legs are useless, Juliet. I can't walk!"  
"Yes." She blinked. "You can."

"Why does he get a sodding hamburger?" Charlie wined from the sidelines, where he belonged. "I want a hamburger!"  
"You'll get your hamburger Charlie," she began, "as soon as you stop acting ugly."

"I CAN'T WALK!" Jack yelled, bring the attention back to him. "AND NO HAMBURGER ON EARTH CAN MAKE ME!"  
"_Do you know how many cows I had to kill to_–" Juliet quickly stopped herself, not having realized what she was saying. She took a deep breath, tilted her head again and smiled. "It smells delicious."

"NO!"  
"Jack."  
"NO!"  
"Jack, will you listen to me?"  
"NO!"

Juliet approached him. "I know you can walk," she stated calmly. "I know that for a fact"  
"Oh yeah? You think you know everything don't you Juliet? Just because you know where I went to college and that my exwife was happy after I was presumably killed in a plane crash and that I frequently wet the bed at summer camp and that Marsha Rosenburg dumped me over the loudspeaker in high school does not mean you know everything about me! So please, tell _me_ how _you_ know I can walk!"

"Because you're tapping your feet."

This was true. Jack looked down, astonished at the sight of his dancing feet. It was only then that he realized that he was tapping along to the Superman theme song being hummed by someone. It was Sawyer and he was actually humming the Batman theme. He looked up Sawyer and Sawyer waved back.

"Now," Juliet said. "Can you stand up for me?"

Jack bowed his head and gave in. He stood and took the hamburger from the tray. As he took a bite Juliet rubbed his tummy and his shoulders slouched in relaxation.

"Now, are you going to be a good boy for Juliet?" Jack nodded while he chewed. "That's better."

"Are you gonna stick around?" He asked, his mouth full.  
"Do you want me to stick around?"  
Jack shrugged. "I don't know. You got any more of those hamburgers?"  
Juliet's smirk spread into a genuine smile. "I can make some more. Maybe we can share them over dinner." Jack missed the twinkle of admiration in her eye because he was too distracted by his hamburger but Juliet caught herself in time to realize how love struck she sounded. "And you can show me around your camp," she added, saving herself.

Jack shrugged again. "Sure, so long as you bring the hamburgers." He took another bite and Juliet watched him as if wanting to say something more.  
"Hey my files tell me you're going to throw a party soon. For Jacka Sayida?"  
"Aha," Jack said, licking the corner of his lip. "Her birthday's in a few days."  
"That sounds really nice."

Jack finally stopped assaulting his hamburger long enough to realize that Juliet actually sounded like she liked him. Of course, he knew all of the women on the island were interested in him (including Rose, the French woman and "Cole" that Other he'd once tried to save from a fatal bullet wound) but it never dawned on him that Juliet liked him. He just thought she liked making hamburgers.

"You can come if you bring burgers."


	18. Chapter 18

**mouseclick815 **sorry I didnt answer you before but sure, you can use any name you want for your fic.

Thanks fo the reviews, guys :)

**Chapter 18**

_Jose, Ana Lucia, and Alex cordially invite you to celebrate the second birthday of their daughter, Jacka Sayida!  
Who: Everyone on the island, except the Others unless Juliet decides to come!  
When: Tuesday, 12:30 pm!  
Where: On the beach between Jose's and Hurley's huts! _

Entertainment and Refreshments will be provided!

With a special appearance by playwright Jose Shepard! And a sneak preview of his upcoming hit play, Redneck Sushi! Also! A possible re-enactment of Jacka Sayida's miraculous conception and birth (including the fabled somersault)!

Jacka Sayida is turning 2 so please make/bring/buy??? age-appropriate gifts! She likes small insects and coconut husks and she especially wants a pony!

P.S. Ana Lucia has threatened to shoot anyone who chooses not to attend! So don't be late!  
Please RSVP and BYOB!

Gunner tried to stand still as Kate crouched down in front of him, straightening his clothes and wiping away any dirt she found (there was a lot). His hair, which was uncharacteristically parted at the side, was fixed - for what had to be the millionth time- with a wet comb so that it was firmly planted onto his head, not a single strand awry. He looked shiny.

"Would you quit fussin' over him, it's just a birthday party," Sawyer said.

Kate ignored him. She had spent a lot of time making sure her little boy looked his best.  
She'd patched up the holes in his pants and let him wear an oxford shirt, three sizes too big, that she had been saving for when he was older. Actually, 'let' wasn't the right word, seeing as how she had to _make_ him put it on. Gunner had never been a big fan of clothes, preferring the freedom that nudity provided, but he was especially wary of shirts with collars (this was his first time wearing one).

Though his memories stretched back only so far, being three years old and all, he recalled longingly the days of yesteryear when he ran around the beach naked, simultaneously impressing Soon-Yi and mortifying her parents. Now there were so many buttons, zippers and other contraptions holding his clothes together that he didn't know where to even begin undressing.

Kate rolled up his sleeves once more and stood up to admire him. "He's a perfect little gentleman." The boy glowered up at his parents, scowling and fidgeting in his silent agony. "There's something missing."  
She went over to Sawyer's dresser (a suitcase full of clothes) and rummaged through it while Sawyer cast a sympathetic glance towards his son. She came back a moment later with a silk tie.

"Whata ya doin'? That's a silk tie!" The only reason Sawyer had a tie amongst his things was because he'd once worn it years ago, before Gunner ever came along, to impress Kate on a romantic date. And although he probably wasn't ever going to wear that tie again he was still opposed to letting a three year-old wear it.

"Sawyer, he needs to look his best. This is Gunner's first big social event. It's the first birthday party anyone's ever had on the island," she said very seriously.

"Yeah, for a _two year-old_."  
"It's like Prom."

Since Sawyer dropped out of high school as a freshman he'd never had the opportunity to go Prom but the word still elicited fond memories. When he was 18 he'd dressed up and had gone back to his old school two hours early to scalp tickets. For several months he generated capital by blackmailing various teachers having affairs with students, and then when the day came, he bought every single prom ticket he could get his hands on and sold them for twice the price on the night of.

You could say he saved the Prom, since without him, only a handful of pimply-faced dorky teenagers and their overweight and over-excited dates would've been there, they being the only ones who had beaten Sawyer to the line to buy tickets. Afterwards, he counted his cash and waited for drunken girls to pick up as they wandered out of the gymnasium looking for a place to vomit. There were a lot of drunk girls that night. And a lot of dry humping. Fond memories indeed. He couldn't imagine that Jacka Sayida's party could be anything like that.

"_Like Prom_?" He repeated. "And how would you know about Prom? You never even been to one."

This was true. Kate had a prom date- his name was Rick. Rick was a dumb jock who she wouldn't have normally gone out with but his dad owned a propane shop. That was reason enough. The night of her Prom Kate had to stand back and watch as Rick got carried away at a merry game of cow tipping. Kate's taffeta prom dress was covered in mud and 32 cows were sleeping on their sides before Rick checked his watch and realized that the prom was already over by then. So they just ended up in a cheap motel room having brief, awkward, unprotected sex, which was the whole point of going to prom in the first place. It all abruptly ended though when Kate found out Rick's middle name as he shouted, "Who's you Daddy?! Rick Wayne Johnson that's who!"

She made Rick Wayne Johnson pull out.

"I know what Proms are like," Kate said. "I watched 90210."  
She gave Sawyer the tie and motioned for him to put it on Gunner.

"I don't want more clothings," Gunner said, apprehensively eyeing the extra piece of material Sawyer held as he kneeled in front of him.  
"As soon as your mom's not looking just take it off and lose it," Sawyer whispered so that Kate couldn't hear. "But lose it where I can find it. This is a silk tie."

Gunner craned his neck in order to get a better view of his father knotting the tie but looking down in this matter was starting to make him cross-eyed. Instead he turned his attention to his father's shirt which was covered in red words.

Kate had not only made sure that Gunner was wearing his best clothes but that Sawyer was too. Unfortunately for her this resulted in Sawyer rummaging through his closet (another suitcase full of clothes) and finding his best shirt covered in Kate's handwriting.

"What the...?" He began reading aloud. "Jack Eko, Pro: quiet, stays out of trouble Con: creepily quiet, Jesus-freak? You mind explainin' this to me, Freckles?"

Kate did explain. As if it was the most acceptable thing in the world she'd told Sawyer that she needed to make a pro and con list of all the children on the island and that his shirt was the only thing she had to write on. And then she apologized for using permanent marker. Sawyer payed her back by deciding to wear the shirt to spite her.

Gunner was too young to be reading yet but that hadn't stopped Sawyer from teaching him the alphabet out of an old issue of Playboy. Sure, Sawyer had some children's books laying around, but Playboy had good articles. Gunner recognized some of the letters and what sounds they made. He tried reading his father's shirt.

"Haaa," he said. "Haaaar."  
Sawyer looked alarmed. "I think this tie's chokin' him."  
"Haaaarl," Gunner continued. He pointed at a word on Sawyer's chest. "What that say, Daddy?"  
Sawyer looked down and smirked. "Oh. _Harlot_. It says Soon-Yi's a harlot."  
"Whatsa harlot?"

Sawyer stood up and turned to Kate. "You wanna handle this one, Mother Hubbard?"

"Marmot?" Kate said, purposely mishearing Gunner. "Marmots are weird squirrely, groundhog type rodents."

"No Mommy, I said harlo–"  
"We should probably get going."

Jacka Sayida sat on a chair decorated like a throne as Jack slowly lowered a tiara made of intertwined twigs onto her head. It probably wasn't an accident that it closely resembled a wreath of laurels.

The girl looked up at him with a very bored expression on her face. Jack looked down at her with proud eyes. "You look so beautiful – you're glowing."

"Jacka Sayida!" Jacka Sayida said.

Jack nodded and turned to his four other children who were all standing in a line watching this exchange with bored expressions of their own. "Don't mess this up for your little sister," Jack told them. "This is her big day. That means no hunting, no screaming, no jesus stick and no eating out of a tub of mayo. Okay, guys?"

He'd decorated the space between his and Hurley's huts by dangling streamers made of ripped pieces of colorful clothing (mostly bandanas) from trees. He and Alex had made pointed dunce party hats for all the kids on the island. For the entertainment he'd commissioned Locke to run a balloon animal stand using his one-time prophylactic prototypes, Charlie to provide the music (he was all he could get on short notice), and Hurley to perform a puppet show (after getting him to agree to cut out the "sock puppet of love" character).

To top it all off Jack had dressed himself in what he thought looked most like a clown costume. He'd taken a ratty old flannel shirt (he'd ripped the sleeves off, naturally) and sewn on haphazardly-arranged patches of bandana. Borrowing Libby's one tube of lipstick (coincidentally, the color was 'Harlot'), he painted the tip of his nose red and drew an unrealistically wide grin onto his face that spanned ear to ear. He had also given himself rosy cheeks. He looked like an alcoholic lumberjack.

Seeing that people were starting to arrive, Jack prepared himself to greet them and maybe get a laugh out of the children.

"You think you brought enough beer?" Kate asked Sawyer sarcastically. He was carrying a six pack under each arm, give or take a few beers he'd drunk over the years.  
"What?" Sawyer retorted. "The invitation said 'BYOB'. Everyone knows that means bring your own beer."

The invitation did say this and as Kate looked around she noticed that everyone heading towards the party was bringing along bottles of liquor as well. Even Jin and Sun were carrying a bottle each.

"Hi!" Kate said, waving them over.

"Merry birthing days!" Jin said, happily.  
Amused, Kate and Sawyer both responded, "Merry birthing days."  
"That's a lot of booze you got there, Yao Ming."  
"We will all need it," Jin replied flatly.  
"Aww, Soon-Yi looks lovely," Kate said. The girl was wearing an impeccably-made dress that Sun had sewn together out of some unused clothes. She even had a bow in her hair.  
"Thank you," Sun replied. "Gunner looks very handsome."

Kate was beaming, and Sawyer couldn't help but smile at how happy this compliment made her. His smile quickly turned into a grimace, though, when he felt something poke him in the ribs. He looked down and saw it was a finger.  
The finger had landed on the word 'harlot'.  
The finger belonged to Jin.

"What is this?" he asked. "Why is my daughter name on your shirt?"

Sun seemed to notice this for the first time too. But even her English wasn't so good that she understood what harlot meant.  
"What does harlot mean?" she asked.  
"You wanna take this one, Freckles?"

"Marmot?" Kate said. "Marmots are weird squirrel, groundhog type rodents."

Sun and Jin took a moment to process this. "Are you saying our daughter looks like a rodent?"

Kate took a moment to process that the same tricks that work on Gunner would not work on Sun and Jin. _Damn_, she thought.

"Well, um, marmots work very hard collecting nuts in the fall for the winter, and we all know Soon-Yi's a hard working little… nut-grabber."

The words were out of her mouth before she knew what she was saying, but luckily she was saved from the downturn in their conversation by Jack, who had jumped out in front of the group yelling, "LOOKIEMEEE!"

Gunner and Soon-Yi cried out in fear and hid behind their parents. The adults weren't as alarmed by the grotesque amount of red on Jack's face as the kids were, in fact in some regards, his appearance was improved.

"Hey, it's just me, kids - your uncle Jose!"  
Gunner grabbed onto Kate's leg even tighter.

Jack noticed this. He tried to make himself seem more affable and just more clown-like in general by putting a cone party hat on Gunner's head. This was the least affable and clown-like thing he could've done however, as he found himself wrestling Gunner, trying to get him to stay still. After a while Jack just gave up and left the hat askew on Gunner's head. "He must have a clown phobia."

"Yeah Freddy," Sawyer said. "That must be it."  
"Jack!" Sun cried. "Your face is covered in blood!"

To the casual observer this would have appeared to be true. It wasn't just that Jack had a lot of lipstick on his face, it was that his sweat was beginning to mix with the color, causing it to run and drip. Before, the costume and red nose made him resemble an alcoholic lumberjack. Now he looked more like a vampire lumberjack. A particularly messy vampire lumberjack who liked to bite into his victims and then bury his face in their open wounds. This may have been what Gunner and Soon-Yi were thinking about when Jack jumped out at them.

Jack chuckled and placed a hand on Sun's shoulder. "No no, it's okay Sun. I'm a clown," he explained. "Dads sometimes dress as clowns at their kids' birthday parties. Now, I don't know what clowns look like in China... probably the same only with slantier eyes... but in _America_ clowns are supposed to look like me."

Truer words had never been spoken.

"Do the Chinese _have_ laughter?" he went on.

"We are Korean!" Jin retorted.

Kate, Sawyer and Gunner decided to move along, leaving the Kwons to argue with the insane vampire clown. Gunner tried to walk along with his parents and forget about the monster man but he looked over his shoulder and continued to watch him. Jack was waving his arms around wildly, screaming, a vein in his neck looked like it was about to burst. He could be heard yelling, "You are NOT Korean, Jin. I've been to Pukhet!"

"Jack's going to give Gunner nightmares," Kate commented.  
"Forget about Gunner, Jack's going to give _me_ nightmares."

The Austen-Fords were almost at Jacka Sayida's throne when they were stopped in their tracks by Ana Lucia. Her eyebrows raised and quizzical, she stared at the cases of beer Sawyer brought under each arm. "What the hell is that?" she asked.

"Beer."

"You brought beer to my child's birthday party?"

"The invitation said BYOB," Kate showed Ana Lucia the invite.

Ana Lucia took it from her and looked it over, rolling her eyes when she got to the BYOB part. "Ugh, Jack meant Bring Your Own Baby. Idiot."

Sayid, who was dragging a 40-pound child-sized rocking horse that he'd spent months carving out of a tree he'd cut down, also had some complaints about the invitations himself. Dropping Jacka Sayida's present, he marched up to Ana Lucia shouting, "Alex gets to be in the invitation!? Alex cordially invites you to her daughter's birthday party!?"

He was irate, and rightly so. As much effort as he made to be properly acknowledged as Jacka Sayida's real father, he wasn't.

"'This a costume party or somethin'?" Sawyer asked. "First Jack's a vampire now you're a Klansman. Golly, I left my assless chaps at home."

Sayid was dressed in what could only be considered a costume of some sort. He had wrapped himself in a white blanket and wore a pointy white hat. He looked like he belonged in the KKK. Hence, the Klansman reference from Sawyer.

"I am dressed as a clown," Sayid responded. "I heard it was customary for the birthday child's father to dress like a clown at the birthday party."

"Then why does it look like you're going to find and kill Michael and Walt?" Ana asked.

Sayid looked confused. "Is this not what a clown looks like?"

For the second time that day the Austen-Fords once again slipped away from an argument they had no interest in witnessing. After all, they had a birthday girl to greet, and Jacka Sayida was awaiting their presence at her throne.

"Okay, this is the game plan," Kate began to explain as they approached the girl. "We're gonna wish Jacka Sayida a Happy Birthday, then Gunner you give her the present and then you can go hang out with your friends or watch the puppet show or play house or do whatever it is you kids do. Then I'll go and mingle with the girls and trade recipes and gossip or do whatever it is us mothers do. Then Sawyer, you're going to find a nice corner to drink your beer and wait till the party is over. And try not to call any of the kids names, okay? Okay!"

Hurley had just given Jacka Sayida a cupcake. And after he stepped aside, Jacka Sayida threw that cupcake away. She eyed the Austen-Fords suspiciously.  
"Happy Birthday!" Kate, Sawyer, and Gunner all said together.  
"Jacka Sayida!" Jacka Sayia responded.

Kate handed Gunner one of those cylindrical Quaker Oats boxes to hand to Jacka Sayida. When he gave it to her Jacka Sayida examined the box and then indifferently began chewing on the top edge of it.

"You gotta open it, princess," Sawyer suggested.

Opening the box and looking inside of it Jacka Sayida was visibly excited to find a living, breathing tree frog that she could kill.  
"Me and my daddy catched it in the jungle," Gunner explained. "Its a pet!"

When they went out looking for the tree frog Sawyer didnt have the heart to tell Gunner that Jacka Sayida would most likely torture and kill the small annoying animal. But he was perfectly okay with the idea since he really hated tree frogs.

"That's a cute present," Claire said from behind them. Sensing the condescending tone in her voice they turned to look at Claire and noticed that Aaron for the first time, picking his nose. He was also wearing a tuxedo. It was for a 22 month old but it fit him just as well. He also wore a red bow tie and matching cummerbund.

"Lemme guess," Sawyer said. "Aaron's dressed as a clown too?"

"Wow, Claire," Kate said. "Aaron looks amazing."  
"Thanks," Claire replied, adoringly patting Aaron's shoulder. "Gunner looks cute too."

In his brief scuffle with Jack, Gunner's shirt had come untucked. Plus the party hat had messed up his perfectly-coifed hair. Also, at that very moment, a button popped off his chest.  
But Kate still thought he looked adorable. "Thanks," she said.

"We got Jacka Sayida a dress," Claire began explaining as if anybody really cared. "We were going to give her one of Aaron's dolls but he just loves them too much. He wanted to keep the dress too for some reason but I had to tell him why he couldn't. Tell them why, Aaron."

Aaron took his finger out of his nose and mumbled, "Because dwesses are for girls."

Claire smiled brightly, proud of her little boy for the way he could so eloquently repeat what had been so forcefully ingrained in him.  
The Austen-Fords regarded the Littletons as they usually did; they stared at them. Sometimes one of them smiled (this time it was Kate). But mostly they just stared blankly. This created an uncomfortable lull.

"Well, I'm gonna go get drunk," Sawyer announced before he slunk away.

"I'm gonna watch Hurley play socks!" Gunner said. Kate watched as he ran off in the direction of the puppet show, Aaron following close behind.

"Don't run Aaron!" Claire shouted after her son. "You'll fall and die!"

She turned back to Kate. "So what do us moms usually do at kids' birthday parties anyway?"  
"I know just the thing," Kate answered. "We exchange recipes."

By the time Sun had explained how to make her 18th obscure Korean dish out of ingredients found in her garden, Kate was ready to burn something down. Talking about recipes was originally her idea but she didn't know it would ignite such a passionate debate between the mothers of the island. Ana Lucia spoke of a Mexican recipe involving raw, bloody meet, Claire explained how to make peanut butter out of your standard empty jar, and Libby just talked for an hour about how much she loved hot dogs.

It was while Kate tried thinking of who's hut to burn down to create a distraction that she spotted Juliet out of the corner of her eye. She was actually standing right beside her. Kate turned to look at her and Juliet smiled.

Juliet could've just kept on smiling but the other women in the group finally realized that she was standing there as well. They all stopped talking and looked at her expectantly, waiting for the Other woman to say something. So Juliet did.

"Food is good," she said. "I like food."

The women continued to watch her wearily. Ana slipped away, presumably to make The Pit ready. But the rest of the women still looked at Juliet like she was an Other. Which she was. But Juliet wanted to be seen as a friend. And if not a friend then at least a visitor with ulterior motives. In an effort to make herself more _included_ and _relatable_, Juliet began rubbing her stomach and repeatedly bringing her hand to her mouth, mimicking the motions one makes when eating. "I eat," she said. "Just like you."

Before any of the women present could say anything, Jack burst into the crowd.

"Juliet!" Jack cried. "You made it just in time to see me perform select parts of my play! Did you bring hamburgers?"  
"Um, no," she responded. "You've got some... red on your face."  
"I'm a clown."  
"Oh. Right, of course you are." She watched Jack smile proudly. "Look, instead of the hamburgers I thought the kids might enjoy this."

What Juliet brought with her was a small TV with a huge battery. Her present for Jacka Sayida and the rest of the children was something none of them had ever seen before: cartoons.

The children were completely entranced with the moving images before them. This was at once enlightening and confusing. Later on all the kids would have questions about whether or not cartoons were real. They didnt recognize the images as cartoon representations of their own surroundings but rather as a separate place they could visit. A lot of them would grow up believing cartoons were real and Josefina especially dreamed of visiting this land of bright colors and talking ducks.

They were so enthralled by these cartoons that they were at once upset when the image started to scramble into static. But, having never seen anything as spectacular as static, they were also quickly taken by this new phenomenon. It looked to them like some other new dimension. Josefina especially dreamed of climbing into the tv and being surrounded by the sparkly silver streaks.

But soon the static was gone and in it's place came a grainy projection of two lovers. Having sex. In a cage.

"What is that?" Sun asked, being the first one to notice this.

"Oh my God," Kate said, recognizing herself and Sawyer immediately.

"Oh," Juliet said calmly (as she said most things). "That's your sex tape. How did that get in there?" But she seemed neither too concerned about showing kids a sex tape nor too quick to do anything about it.

Unbeknownst to everyone, despite her reserved demeanor, Juliet lived for only two things in life: food and sex. Preferably together if possible. It was these two loves that gave her the idea of starting a weekly book club. Under the premise of discussing great literary works, Juliet would serve the club cupcakes laced with power aphrodisiacs, ecstasy, and just a pinch of viagra. Usually within minutes, the weekly meeting would descend into a wild orgy of writhing naked bodies, delicious snacks, and papercuts.  
Putting Sawyer and Kate into easily escapable cages was her idea. The closed-circuit video feed long thought to have been installed by the Dharma Initiative was also her doing.

In any event, it was Jack who jumped into action first.

Maybe because he'd dreamt about it so much Jack immediately recognized the sounds of Kate's moans even before he looked up to see the tape.

"What the..." At this point jack looked up to see the tape. "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?! The children! I have to protect the children!"

He jumped up and started simultaneously screaming and knocking things over in an attempt to distract the children (all of whom's eyes were glued to the screen). Hurley's puppet show theater was stomped on and Charlie's guitar was crushed to bits before he ever got to the TV.

In fact, out of all the parents who started running to their children, none thought to stop the tape.

"Aaron!" Claire yelled as she ran towards him. "Don't look directly at the heathens!"

"What's going on?" Sawyer asked, sneaking up behind Kate. Kate pointed at the TV and then crossed her arms over her chest. Sawyer looked over at the TV and smiled, satisfied. "So we have a sex tape."

Kate tried to apologize to anyone who would listen, but everyone was so up-in-arms about what was going on. The beach was exploding with fury as all the parents stomped around, cursing the heavens for bestowing this tape on them.  
But the TV still remained untouched.  
So Sawyer just stood back and watched.

"Dude," Hurley said, walking up to him, his voice a mixture of shock and awe. "That's so awesome."

Sawyer smiled. "Stick around. The best part's comin' up."

"Sawyer!" Kate said.

"_What_, you know it is!"

Yes, she did know the best part was coming up. And as embarrassed as she was, and as red as her cheeks were, Kate still snuck a peek at the TV. It really was a good part.

"Arent you going to do anything?" Sun asked Sawyer and Kate. Jin was already on his way to cover both Soon-Yi's eyes _and_ ears. If he could've found a bag to put over his daughter's head, he probably would've. But right before he reached her, Gunner reached her first. Jin stopped in horror as he watched Gunner, that white trash baby, _kiss_ his beautiful little girl.

"WHITETRASHBABYLIPS!" Jin yelled.

This got Sun's attention. When she saw Gunner kissing Soon-Yi, her hand came up to her mouth and she said something in Korean.

Then Kate finally noticed what was going on and like Sun, she too brought her hand to her mouth in shock. Of course, she wasn't as appalled. "Gunner's first kiss!" she said.

And this got Sawyer's attention. "That's my boy!" he exclaimed. "He's copying his old man!"

Sun understood this to mean that Gunner was copying what his father was doing on the tape. Knowing this she became alarmed. More so.

"Your son is molesting my daughter!"

"Calm down, Sunshine," Sawyer said. "I'll go get him."

By then the party was pretty much over. Someone had eventually thought to shut off the tape and as much as Jack tried to persuade people to stay, everyone just wanted to get their kids home.

Sawyer and Kate were walking back to their home, Gunner on Sawyer's arm, when Juliet approached them.  
"Listen, I am truly sorry," she said, her forehead crinkling with concern. "I had no idea I had recorded over your sex tape."

"How could–" Kate began to say, "How could you tape us like that?"  
"It was the only copy," she said. "So if you want me to make another you're going to have to do all of that again..."

Kate began walking away but not before Sawyer turned to Juliet and whispered, "She's just a little angry right now. We'll talk tomorrow."

The Austen-Fords were not all the way home before another Other interrupted their walk. This time it was Alex, who had been curiously absent from the party. She looked a little frazzled, like she'd just run out of bed because her alarm clock hadn't gone off. Also, she was wearing a bear costume.

"Where is everyone?" she asked. "What happened to the party?"

"The party's over, Minnie," Sawyer said. "Are you bleedin'?"

It only looked like Alex was bleeding because the bear hide she was wearing was still pretty fresh. It was at around this time that Sawyer and Kate realized that Alex was wearing an actual bear.

"But I just spent..." Alex said, a little out of breath, "I just spent 4 hours killing this bear."

"Well what the hell for?"

"For the party!" Alex explained. "I wanted to look like a clown!"

Kate shook her head. "Has no one on this island ever seen an actual clown before?"


	19. Chapter 19

**Flashbacks:  
(A device in which an earlier event is inserted into the normal chronological order of a narrative)**  
While everyone else on the island slept, Kate lay awake.

She couldn't sleep for a number of reasons, but what topped her list was Korean food. She blamed the Korean food for everything. Though, Sawyer had the same Korean food and he was having no trouble sleeping at all.

Jealous, she turned around to watch him sleep like a baby, when she noticed her other baby staring back at her.

"You're awake," she told Gunner.

"You too," Gunner said. "You have a bad dream?"

Gunner knew all about bad dreams because he'd just begun experiencing them for himself.  
Gunner's once pleasant dreams of swimming and running through the jungle hunting Others, were being infiltrated by Bump. His nightmares usually consisted of his vague idea of a sibling stealing his parents away from him the way the Others stole people. These newfound nightmares had earned Gunner an open invitation to sleep in Sawyer and Kate's bed whenever he needed to.

Of course this wasn't Sawyer's idea. In fact, he'd argued against it, knowing that having a kid in your bed would prevent you from having _something else_ in your bed. Plus, having never slept in his own parents' bed, he just didnt see the logic in it. Kate had never slept in her parents' bed either but she saw this sort of thing done on an episode of _Growing Pains_ once so it had to be a good idea.

"Was your dream a Josefina?" Gunner asked.

When Gunner first started having his bad dreams Kate tried to explain that they were actually called nightmares. But since Kate could sometimes be heard around their home calling Josefina a nightmare, it was easy to understand why Gunner assumed the words "Josefina" and "nightmare" were interchangeable. Either way Kate knew what he meant.

"I had a dream that you were fast asleep," she said.  
"But I not tired."  
"You should be. You had a pretty big day today."  
"I did?"

Kate nodded and swept the bangs out of his eyes. "Yep," she said.

Her thoughts once again drifted back to Korean food. Or more specifically, the events that took place while she was eating Korean food. It all happened earlier that evening.   
–FLASHBACK OF EARLIER THAT EVENING–

"Jin said _what_ now?" Sawyer asked.

"He said it was too important to talk about just then, especially without you there. That's why he invited us to dinner."

"Ain't no way I'm goin' to no dinner party with the Joy Luck Club, Freckles."

Five minutes later the Austen-Fords were sitting across the table from the Kwons, eating what Kate and Sawyer seemed to think was a genuine Korean dinner.

They thought this because they were currently eating while sitting on the ground, which they thought to be a very "Asian" thing to do. And it was, but it was also a very "castaways stranded on an island" thing to do considering everyone who wasnt John Locke was too lazy to make their own chairs. The food wasn't Korean either (Jin cooked his usual fish and Sun made soup with herbs from her garden) but this didn't stop Sawyer or Kate from repeatedly commenting on how "surprisingly delicious" Korean food was.

Kate took her soup bowl in both hands and turned it around three times before bringing it to her lips and taking a sip.

She did this whole procedure quite a lot, thinking it was proper Korean table etiquette. What Kate did not know, however, was that unlike the Chinese and Japanese, Koreans did not pick up their soup bowls. She really should've known better, seeing as how Sun, Jin and even Soon-Yi were drinking their soup with spoons. Sawyer should've realized this too, but he copied Kate and picked up his soup bowl as well.

"I'll tell ya, Korean food is surprisingly delicious," Sawyer said after chugging a big gulp. "What do you call this again, Sunshine?"

"Soup," Sun said, a little confused.

"Soop," Sawyer repeated. "Sooooop. "Am I pronouncin' that right?"

Jin sighed despondently. Watching his guests drink soup was becoming an increasingly discouraging activity. Especially watching Gunner, who had put his fish in his soup and stuck his finger in the bowl to mix the concoction.

"Mango surprise," Gunner whispered in an informative tone when he caught Jin eyeing him. The boy then slowly and carefully slid the bowl across from him to Soon-Yi saying, "I made you supissingly delicious Kornea food, Soony."

"Enough!" Jin said. "Dinner is done."  
"Done?" Sawyer asked. "Ain't we at least gonna have some sake?"  
"Oh, I love sake," Kate exclaimed.  
"You can't have sake, you'll get Bump drunk," he said, winking.  
"I did not make sake," Sun explained. 

Before anyone could say anything more about the nonexistent sake, Jin interjected, trying to get to the point of the dinner so that it could be over with as quickly as possible.

"It does not look like we will get rescued any time soon."

The random, and rather depressing, change of topic caused a momentary silence to fall over the table.  
"You know, Kimchi, most people try starting conversations about the weather," Sawyer said.

"Have you thought about what will happen to your children when they are older, Sawyer?" Jin went on.

"With any luck, Gunner'll turn into Tarzan."

Jin was confused, not knowing what "Tarzan" meant. But he let it go. "Our children are going to grow older and only know each other."

"What exactly are you gettin' at?"  
"What I am trying to say is–"  
"Yeah?"  
"Our kids–"  
"Uh huh?"  
"They'll be–"  
"Spit it out, Kamikaze."  
"I think we should arrange marriage with Gunner and Soon-Yi!" Jin finally said in one long breath.

There was something of a stunned silence on the opposite side of the table. Even Gunner-- who, like many children, could acutely sense tension– stopped playing with his food. Sawyer and Kate didnt seem to know what to think. In fact, they weren't even sure if they'd heard Jin right. Perhaps he'd said something in Korean that merely sounded like he'd said he wanted to arrange the marriage of two 3 year-olds.

Suddenly, Sawyer began to laugh. "Funny."  
"It is not a joke."  
Sawyer stopped laughing. "They're three!"

"But your son kissed our daughter!"  
"Yeah, that's what 3 year-olds do!" Now it was Jin's turn to stare at Sawyer blankly. "Well it's what _our_ 3 year-old does," Sawyer reiterated. "Look, Kim Jong, I don't know how they do things in Korea, but there aint no such thing as arranged marriage where I'm from."  
"Your son has tainted my daughter!"  
"_Tainted?!_"  
"He violated my Soon-Yi!"  
"He's just a kid!"  
"He is White Trash Baby!"

"Hey!" Kate snapped, finally interjecting the argument. "Who are you calling a white trash baby?"

Dinner got ugly after that.  
---------------------------

"Remember what I told you to do when you cant sleep?"

Gunner nodded and said, "Count ships."  
"Sheep."  
"I dunno how sheeps look like."  
"Ok, then forget sheep. Just think about something good."

"Like cookies? Cookies are so good."  
"Good idea, Gun," Kate whispered.  
"I thinking about cookies right now," he mimicked her whisper.  
"What kind?"  
"Choclichip."   
"Mmm," Kate said sleepily.

"Choclichip cookies are my favorite cookies cuz they have chocolate in them."

"They do," Kate agreed.  
"Mommy?"  
"Yes?"  
"Can I have a cookie?"  
Kids shouldn't eat cookies in middle of the night. But all this cookie talk had gotten Kate hungry. Suddenly she was craving the stuff. Just like Gunner had begun having his nightmares, Kate had begun having her cravings. And suddenly cookies in the middle of the night sounded like a very good idea.

"Sawyer? You awake?"  
He wasn't. And although his back was facing her Kate could tell he wasn't just by the way his shoulder rose and fell. He couldn't have been more asleep if he snored. Not the Sawyer snored. Though he did occasionally mumble obscenities. And nicknames.

"Sawyer?" she called a little louder.  
She heard a small grunt. That was good enough for her.  
"Pookie?"   
"What?" he turned onto his other side to face Kate and Gunner, though his eyes were still closed. "Do we have any more cookies left?"

Even though he was hardly conscious and had no idea if he was dreaming or awake he still thought the question was a bit strange. Scrunching his eyebrows he said, "We're out."   
He may have been half asleep but he remembered throwing most of the Dharma brand Oreos out the last time he sat down to have any because they just weren't twisting off right. "Go to sleep, Gunner."  
Even if Gunner hadn't asked the question Sawyer figured he was the one who got Kate to ask.

But Kate wasn't going to give up that easily. "Can you go to the kitchen outside and get us some?"  
"What?" he asked again., more awake now. "It's the middle of the night, Freckles."  
"I want cookies," Gunner said.  
"Well too damn bad, you ain't gettin' any." He wasn't about to start spoiling his kid.  
"But mommy wants cookies," Gunner said. "because Bump wants cookies too. Because mommy has cravons."  
He confused the words crayons and cravings, which Kate had been telling him about recently.  
Sawyer opened his eyes.  
"Cravings," Kate corrected. "But it's okay, Gunner. Your father's too tired from dinner. He doesn't have to get up if he doesn't want to."  
Both Gunner and Kate were watching Sawyer and even through his sleep hazy eyes he could see their sorry expressions. It made him feel guilty. And if there was ever anything that could make him do something against his will it was guilt.  
"Fine!"  
He sat up and pulled the covers off very moodily. "I'll go get you your cookies. And you and Gunner and Bump better like them!"

He stepped into his jeans and pulled them up in one fell swoop.

"And a pickle!" Kate called just as Sawyer was leaving.

He flung the door closed and marched off in the direction of the kitchen, which wasn't much of a kitchen at all save for the shelf Rose stacked the food on.

"Cookies," Sawyer muttered.

He rifled through the shelf, looking for a box of cookies but with no real effort, knowing that all the good food that was dropped down on them was swiped up as soon as it hit the ground. The only things left in the kitchen were the things nobody wanted. Which left him with the delectable options of Dharma Brand Pickled Shrimp In A Can, Sauerkraut, kosher for Passover gefilte fish, Sardines, and one cup of banana Jell-O. He picked up the cup and shook it's contents, just to see the yellow stuff quiver.

"Kate hates Jell-O."  
Sawyer spun around and found Jack standing right behind him.

"_I know that!_" Sawyer snapped, putting the cup back on the shelf a little more forcefully than needed. "What the hell you doin' out here in the middle of the night?"

Jack gestured towards Alex (whom Sawyer hadn't noticed either). She had apparently just finished arranging globs of cookie dough on a pan and was now trying to start a fire. "We're making cookies," Jack declared. "For Kate."

"We heard she wanted some!" Alex added.

"What, you two were spyin' on us?"

"Yes," Alex and Jack answered in unison.

"Luckily we were able to find a can of cookie dough on the shelf, right next to the gefilte fish," Jack said. "Quite the fish, isnt it?"

"Like you even know what the hell gefilte fish is."

"I'll have you know I once caught a 30-pound gefilte fish off the coast of Thailand with only a kite and a stethoscope. Put up a good fight."

"Gefilte fish ain' a real fish, Jackass. It's bunch of different fish ground up all together."

"Well then I guess you could say I caught a dozen fish that day, couldn't you?"

"Wow," Alex whispered in awe. She let the pan rest on the fire and went to stand beside Jack once again.

"Of course, I let it back into the ocean," Jack continued. "I couldn't bring myself to kill it. So me and Tresura went to–"  
"Tresura?" Sawyer asked.  
"My Asian girlfriend. At least I think that was her name. Maybe it was Kerchiefa. Anyway, getting back to my story, I couldn't kill the fish so Kerchiefa and I went to her brother's restaurant to have him kill and cook a gefilte fish for us."

Jack thought back to that pleasant, breezy day in Thailand when he and Kerchiefa sat down for lunch on their first and only date.

–FLASHBACK OF JACK'S FIRST AND ONLY DATE WITH ASIAN GIRLFRIEND–

"I love you," Jack said to his Asian Girlfriend sitting across the table.

"You are not from Thailand," observed Kerchiefa. "It's like you have a gift," he said. "It's like you have a gift for _knowing_ about people. Like this morning when you knew I knew perfectly well how to build a kite but I was just pretending I didn't so that you would come over and help me."  
"I'm confused."  
"And I'm a very likable guy, Kerchiefa."  
"My name is Achara."  
"Food's here!"

Indeed, the food had come just then, brought by Achara's brother. Jack dug in right away, expertly using his chopsticks to fervently devour the gefilte fish.

"This gefilte fish is surprisingly delicious," Jack said.  
"That is not gefilte fish," Achara informed him. "It's whale penis."   
---------------------------------------

"Bueller!"

Jack snapped out of his reverie, disturbed by a memory he thought he'd long forgotten.

"As much fun as it is listening to your adventures with supposed Asian chicks and gefilte fish I really don't got the time," Sawyer said sarcastically. "I'm here for the cookies and that's it."

"No," Jack said. "I'm the one giving her the cookies."  
"And me!" Alex said.  
"Alex and I are giving her the cookies," Jack said, correcting himself. "Kate needs to see who really cares about her in her time of need."

"Hey!" Sawyer snapped. "I'm here ain' I?"

"I remember when Kate was pregnant with Gunther," Jack said. "Didn't she always crave cookies then too?"  
Sawyer was reluctant to answer him, not wanting to particularly have this conversation (or any conversation) with Jack. But he felt the need to say something, to confirm this fact, because he somehow felt like it would justify him. "And raisins," he said curtly. "But I could never find any."

"Of course you couldn't," Jack said. "And you couldn't even think to pick grapes and dry them yourself now could you? When Ana Lucia was pregnant all she ever wanted was undercooked boar head. And even then she'd mostly just suck the blood out. But I still got it for her, no questions asked. "

"This story got a point to it, Homer?"

"The point of the story, Sawyer, is that I'm the one getting Kate her cookies and you're not. So _the point is_ that I'm a better person than you are," he said. "And that you don't deserve Kate," he added. "And that I'm awesome at fishing."  
Sawyer was not having a good night, and if he wanted to, he could've punched Jack in the face right about then, or at the very least come up with a snarky remark. But he was tired as hell. The only thing he could care to say was, "Screw off."

"No," Jack said defiantly. "Someone has to show you how to treat a pregnant woman! I have been there every step of the way for Kate! I still remember the moment I first heard Kate was pregnant for the second time."

–FLASHBACK OF THE MOMENT JACK FIRST HEARD KATE WAS PREGNANT FOR A SECOND TIME–

Jack was strolling down the beach, embarking on his daily mission: looking for people to save. His first potential heroic act of day presented itself in the form of Hurley carrying a pie.

"Hurley, wait up!" Jack said, jogging up to him. "Do you know how much cholesterol is in that pie?"  
Yes, Jack was actually going to save Hurley from cholesterol.

"No dude, how much?" Hurley responded, clueless to Jack's efforts.  
"Lots," Jack said simply. "So don't eat it or you will die."

Satisfied with himself for saving Hurley from a lifetime struggle with cholesterol, Jack was on his way again. But he hadn't gone far before Hurley informed him that the pie wasn't for him.

"Yeah right, Hurley."

Convinced that Hurley would now take the pie into the jungle and eat it in secret, Jack proceeded to try and pry the pie from the man's fingers.

"Hey!" Hurley protested. "It's for Kate and Sawyer!"  
"I won't let you kill the both of them too!" Jack shouted back. "Maybe just Sawyer!"  
"Look man, I don't know what you're talking about! It's just to say congratulations!"

Jack stopped fighting him. "Congratulations? For what?"

Hurley tried to catch his breath. (Holding onto the pie had left him winded). "You didn't hear? Sawyer and Kate are, like, procreating again."

"Procreating?" Jack said slowly, as if having heard the word for the first time in his life. He was drawing a blank.

Just then, Jin and Sun stepped out of Sawyer and Kate's hut, smiling and talking amongst themselves. If he strained to hear them Jack thought he could make out the words, "Kow Na." Of course, they were speaking in Korean and it was impossible to understand what they were saying but the words still scared Jack. To his ears, they sounded an awful lot like, "New Baby."

He grabbed the pie from an unsuspecting Hurley and stormed into Sawyer and Kate's hut as the fat man called after him.

"Hi!" Jack said. His voice was loud, his smile wide and fake.

Kate's smile seemed to fade slightly, aware of how this news might negatively affect Jack. Inversely, Sawyer's smile grew into a full grin.

"Hi ya back, Doc," he said. "I take it you heard the good news!"

"Good news?"

"Me and Kate are havin' another baby!"

Jack couldn't remember much else, seeing as how he'd passed out at that point. In fact he couldn't remember how he'd ended up outside the hut or how his clothing had become drenched or why one side of his shirt was covered in mango pie. (The truth was he woke up outside the hut because Sawyer had dragged his unconscious body there; his clothes were soaked because of his own tears; and he had mango pie on him because when he passed out the pie had broken his fall).

"You OK?"

Jack tuned to look at the small boy who was talking to him. Gunner looked genuinely scared/concerned to find a soaking wet Jack right outside his home, looking distraught. With his finger he swiped a bit of the mango from Jack's shirt and grimaced as he tasted it. "Tastes like tears," Gunner said. "Why you crying?"

Jack wiped his nose on his sleeve. Which actually turned out to be his bare forearm since Jack didn't wear sleeves.   
"Your mother is going to have a baby," Jack said plainly.  
"I know!" Gunner exclaimed, bouncing up and down in the way kids did when they got excited. "I going to get a brother or sister soon! And we gonna play evyday and it will love me cuz I the big brother!"

Gunner was essentially explaining to Jack everything that had been explained to him the night before by Sawyer and Kate. What Sawyer and Kate had told him about being a big brother and having a new sibling to love and play with had gotten Gunner very excited indeed. And he was still excited in the morning, even in the face of a crying Jack.

"Let me give you a bit of advice, Gummer," Jack said. And Gunner, in all of his excited frenzy, opened his ears and his heart to listen to whatever Jack had to say. "Children are wonderful. But siblings," he sighed, authoritatively, "Siblings suck. They all strive for their parents' attention."  
When he saw that Gunner wasn't fully comprehending him, he tried to explain his point in simpler terms. "Your mom and dad are going to love your new brother or sister more than they love you. It's a fact of life. That's why I chose to be an only child."

"Live without a brother, die alone," Jack said. He was already beginning to cry again. He plopped down onto the sand and began weeping in an instant. Gunner promptly ran away from him, rethinking his stance on the whole new sibling thing.  
--------------------------------------

"I know all about kids and pregnancy, Sawyer!" Jack shouted, rather randomly. "I have five kids. FIVE. You only have one!"  
"I've got one and a half!" Sawyer corrected.  
"Halves don't count. For all I know I could have five and a half."  
Alex stepped up with the pan of newly-baked cookies in hand. "How are babies made?" She asked.  
Jack coughed. "A conversation for another time."

"I'll take those cookies now, Puddin' Pop," Sawyer said, taking the pan from Alex.  
"Hey!" she said, "we were going to give them to her."  
"I'll make sure and tell 'er that."

Of course, Jack wasn't going to take it that easy, but Sawyer tripped him, so it all worked out.

"Freshly-baked cookies!" Sawyer said, as he came in through the door of his home. Kate put her finger to her lips, and gestured toward Gunner who had finally fallen asleep at her side.

"And to think I went through all this trouble, " Sawyer said, putting the pan down on the crate next to the bed.  
"I still get to eat them," Kate whispered.

Sawyer went to his side of the bed and carefully scooped Gunner up, letting the boy's sleeping head rest on his bare shoulder. Kate watched as Sawyer carried Gunner back to his own bed and noticed, as if for the first time, how similar their skin tones were. They had golden skin. So gold she wondered how anyone could call her son a white trash baby. Sawyer's golden arms wrapped around Gunner's tiny golden frame. They looked like they were hugging each other, holding on tight. She smiled to herself, feeling like she was seeing their father/son bond take form.

After putting Gunner down, Sawyer came back to his own bed and slumped down onto it, relishing the newfound space. But he wasn't tired. And hearing the crunch of every bite Kate took out of her cookies wasn't lulling him back to sleep either. He turned on his side and watched her, taking advantage of the view. The way he was leaning he could look up at her face, and right next to him he could reach her stomach and touch it if he wanted to. And suddenly he felt like wanting to. His hand surreptitiously crawled under the t-shirt she was wearing and he rested his palm flat on her no-longer-so-flat stomach.

She looked down at him curiously. "What are you doing?" she asked.  
"Checkin' out Bump," he answered. "Gettin' bigger.""I know," Kate said, eyebrow cocked. She dramatically took another bite of her cookie.  
"Well don't look so sad, Freckles, _I_ can't wait till you get even bigger."  
"Please."  
"What? Pretty soon you'll be in nothin' but one of my old t-shirts," he said, his eyebrows raised over suggestively heavy-lidded eyes. "Nothin' sexier than that."

Kate blushed, because Sawyer could still make her blush. "Please," she said again, but she was grinning now.  
"You walkin' around in my t-shirt and boxers," he sucked in a tight breath through pursed lips. "Nothin' sexier," he said again.

"What do you think it'll be this time?" she asked.

Sawyer didnt spend any time daydreaming about that sort of thing much, and Kate had to know he probably wouldn't give her a serious answer. All he knew was that if it was a boy he'd want him to look like him and if it was a girl he'd want her to look like Kate. It was a silly thought but it was the most thought he'd given to the matter. Until the chat he'd had with Jin after dinner.

–FLASHBACK OF SAWYER'S CHAT WITH JIN AFTER DINNER--

Jin and Sawyer stood about 3 feet apart, side to side, silent. The sky was dark, and scattered along the beach were small campfires keeping the place illuminated like street lights. If Sawyer had a cigarette he'd be smoking it. Instead, he stuffed his fists in his pockets and looked out at the ocean.

"Pump is a beautiful name," Jin said, breaking up the quiet.

Sawyer looked at him sideways. "It ain' a name. And it's Bump."

"Oh," Jin responded. "If it is not a name then what is it?"

"Look, we don't gotta make chit chat. 'Soon as Kate comes out we'll be on our merry way."

Kate was still inside talking to Sun, and even though Jin had already apologized for what he said about Gunner, Sawyer didnt much feel like forgiving him any time soon.

"I just want you to understand."

"Understand what, that my boy is nothing but poor white trash that taints little girls?" Sawyer asked. "If we don't ever get rescued my son's probably gonna be seeing a lot more of your daughter," Sawyer said, actually kind of enjoying this. "So you best just get over it now. White trash baby aint goin' nowhere."

Jin nodded and began walking back to the door of his hut, but stopped and turned to Sawyer once again.  
"I do not know what it is like to have a son," he said. "But I think it must be different. You are not only Gunner's father, you are his friend too. But with a daughter you cannot be a friend. I hope you have a girl so that you will understand."  
--------------------------

"If it's a girl, I'm still gonna be her friend."

Kate looked at him quizzically, having no idea where that came from. "Of course you will," she assured him. "I will too. So long as she likes climbing trees."  
"What if she wants to play with dolls instead, Freckles?"  
"Where would she get an idea like that?"

They both smiled, Sawyer's fingertips grazing Bump.


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 20: Gun in the First Act  
(A literary technique whereby an element is introduced early in the story, but whose significance does not become clear until later on)**

Before he was even really awake Sawyer felt something tap him on the head. 

He peeked open one eye and saw clear blue skies. That eye was forced closed again when a small object fell from above and hit him square in the face. It felt just like what had tapped him before; light, plastic, tubular. He woke up fully now and rolled over to notice five markers littering the sand around where his head had lain.

He gathered them up briskly and shoved them into his pocket as he stood up. Dusting the sand off his clothes, he caught a glimpse of the doormat he had been using as a bed. In faded black letters, made possible by the aforementioned markers, it spelled out "The Austen-Fords."

Only now, the name "Ford" had a prominent X crossed over it in red.

The door swung ajar and a hand slipped though the opening preparing to drop yet another marker, but Sawyer gripped Kate's wrist before she could. She opened the door wider and looked at him with disdain. "You're finally up," she observed.

"Thanks for the wake-up call, _Darlin'_."

Kate stepped back and let Sawyer into his former home. He readily passed her by without so much as a second glance and went to greet his children who were at the dining table having breakfast.

"Who's ready for a fun weekend over at their Pop's house?" he asked enthusiastically.

"You mean The Hammock?" Gunner said.

_The Hammock_ was a fun little name Sawyer had given his new bachelor pad to brighten up the place. It needed some brightening up because ironically enough, his home actually was a hammock now. When it rained he sat under it.

"That's right, Gun! We get to sleep under the stars tonight. You as excited as I am?"

Gunner did not respond, instead puting down his cup of orange juice and grabbing his pack. "I'll wait outside," he said before making a mad dash for the door.

"Don't run, Gun!" Kate called after him.

"Well he seems excited," Sawyer sighed. He kneeled down so that he was eye level with his other child. "You're excited, right Bump?"

Bump, who even at five years old realized that her nickname was awful, frowned at the sound of it. "Do you and Mommy hate each other?" she asked plainly.

Sawyer laughed as if the mere notion was preposterous. "'Course not!" He stood up, no longer wanting to look Bump in the eye. "We love each other!"  
Kate came to stand next to him. "Very much," she added

As if on cue, they both put an arm around the other's shoulder attempting to feign the proper amount of cheeriness. Sawyer even kissed Kate on the cheek. They both grinned. Hard.  
It was awkward.

Bump had seen her parents at their happiest, and this all-out display of teeth, deep dimples, and pale freckles was a lie. Like everyone else in her family, not only was she adept at telling lies, but also at seeing through them.

"Why don't you go wait outside with your brother while I have a word with your Daddy," Kate suggested. She handed Bump her bag and smiled as she bent down to kiss the top of her curly brown hair. After walking her to the door she turned once again to Sawyer, her expression reversed.

"Why were you sleeping outside the door?"

"Because I wanted to be here bright and early to take my kids."

"Did you really want _your_ kids to find you sleeping on the doormat? Again?" She hissed, making sure said kids couldn't hear her angry tone. "Quite the father figure you are."

"_Father_," Sawyer corrected. "I ain't nobody's Figure."

"Please. Gunner's not even yours!"

Gunner _was_ Sawyer's and this was increasingly obvious as the boy grew older. He was only eight but aside from Kate's nose and green eyes, he already looked exactly like Sawyer, dimples and all. Kate only said what she said to be mean. Which, judging by Sawyer's hurt reaction, worked.

"Then who's exactly is he? Jack's?! I wouldn't be surprised!"

In fact, Jack had already claimed Gunner as his own. It happened about 20 minutes after Sawyer and Kate separated. He had also brought a stethoscope and a kite and offered to teach his new son how to fish.

"At least Jack's good in bed!"

Kate had never slept with Jack. Ever. Again, she was just saying ridiculous things to hurt Sawyer. Absolutely _ridiculous_ things.

And this particular ridiculous thing had taken a blow to Sawyer's ego. His aptitude in bed should never come into question.

"Oh yeah? Well freckles on a grown woman stopped being hot a long time ago!"  
"_How dare you?!_" Kate yelled. "I never even liked the name "Freckles" anyway!

Sawyer, taken aback by this comment, retorted with, "Yeah well… well Bump isn't even yours!"  
Kate rolled her eyes. "What was I thinking being with such a stupid, perverted ass like you?!"  
"Hey - I'm not perverted!"  
"You still have that massive stack of porn! Nine years you've been holding on to that."  
"Porn? What porn? Never seen one in my life," he replied, innocently.  
"Stop kidding yourself, I found your stash. I even found a copy of _Canadian Male_ in there."  
"That was at the bottom! I never even saw that one was in there until last month. Then I gave that issue to Charlie!"  
"Likely story!"

Their arguments pretty much continued along these lines for a couple more minutes. Gunner and Bump, who could hear everything outside, knew that it'd be over soon. Kate still had to rue the day she ever agreed to kiss Sawyer and Sawyer still needed to say that the only reason he'd pursued her in the first place was because the younger, much hotter chick was eight months pregnant.

The argument finally ended with Sawyer saying, "I hate you, Kate."

To which she replied, "I hate you too, James."

He barged out the door yelling, "And don't you dare touch my markers again!" Kate promptly threw the rest of Sawyer's markers at his head. They fell to the ground just as she slammed the door behind him.

Gunner and Bump looked at their father in silence.

He fixed a smile on his face. "You guys ready to go?"

Before going to The Hammock, Gunner had to be dropped off at school.

Now that the children on the island were older it was only a matter of time before someone built a school. And Jack put it upon himself to be that someone. Though, 'built' was a loose term.  
Most of the structures on the island were pretty sturdy institutions, taking many weeks and sometimes even months to build. Jack's schoolhouse was just a big piece of tarp over four bamboo posts, canopy-style. Whenever it was applicable, Jack liked to boast about the fact that it had only taken him two hours to build the whole thing. And in his opinion it was always applicable.

_The Jose Shepard School For The Gifted Kids of Jose Shepard_ was the crowning achievement in Jack's life.

As the name implied, the school was exclusively built by Jack, for his own six children. But with attendance being so low seeing as how Ana Lucia refused to enroll her kids into the school, Jack finally decided to open the doors to all the children on the island (Grades 1-6). Sawyer and Kate, like most of the other parents, saw the school as a sort of free daycare center.

But other islanders besides Jack involved themselves in the school too. Jin and Sun volunteered to teach. Opting not to give Soon-Yi a home-schooled education in favor of a more social lifestyle, they still wanted some control over what she learned. Sun taught math while Jin taught Korean History. Hurley spent time at the school too, running the Home Ec class, and Locke even taught a hunting course entitled "Killing the Boar and Finding Spirituality."

But the most peculiar course at The Jose School just happened to be Jack's favorite. He called it, "The Inevitable Decline of Skate: Socio-policitical Implications."

Today's lecture was entitled, "Sawyer: Kate's Biggest Mistake."

Gunner, who had always enjoyed learning, learned the art of tuning out as a result of this course. He would usually lay his head on his desk, or pass notes with Soon-Yi, or watch as his best friend Aaron (Milhouse to Gunner's Bart) ate a healthy supply of paste.  
It was what he was doing now as Jack spoke.

"We all know she was only with him that fateful night at the cages– and by 'with' I mean in the biblical sense– because of circumstances beyond anyone's control," Jack stated. "Circumstances put me in an aquarium and Sawyer in a bear cage. It goes without saying that if it were me in the cage, Kate and I would've made jabies.

"So, circumstance explains why the opportunity was there-- what made the sex so easily accessible. But it does not explain why psychologically and emotionally Kate 'chose' to be with Sawyer. Anyone want to take a guess?"

"BECAUSE SHE WAS CRAZY!" Josefina yelled, her uniborw forming a menacing V shape atop her eyes.

"Possibly," Jack said, nodding. "But other than the sexual act itself we have no substantial proof of that. We can only look at recorded data, and as my notes of their arguments indicate, Kate has repeatedly told Sawyer that she only slept with him that day because she thought he was going to die. She says those exact words to him every Sunday when they meet to exchange children. Which brings us to our next lecture; 'Gunner: Kate and Sawyer's biggest mistake as a couple.' But we'll have to pick up on that next week. It's time for Show and Tell!"

Gunner would've liked to pay attention during this because it usually turned out to be as fun as watching Aaron eat paste, but Jack Eko was up first. And he brought a rock.

"Rocks are good for smashing heads," the massive boy explained. "You can use sharp rocks to carve scripture into wood."

Jack didn't need to hear anymore of the presentation. Mostly because it was already over. He gave Jack Eko an A on the spot, and then asked Gunner to come to the front of the class for his turn.

"For Show and Tell I brought a magazine," Gunner began as he stood in front of his attentive peers. "According to my Mom, people outside of The Island read magazines to pass the time and it keeps them from getting bored. My Dad taught me to read with this magazine." He unrolled the magazine in his hand so that his classmates could get a clear view of it. "A lady named Ms. September has her picture on the front. We have a lot in common because we both hate clothes–"

"Show and Tell is over!" Jack declared, lurching out of his seat to snatch the magazine from Gunner's hands.

"Hey!" the boy shouted. "That's my Dad's!"

Jack dealt with Gunner in the only way he knew how. "Out!" he yelled.

"Son of a _bitch!_" Gunner muttered under his breath as he stepped out from under the schoolhouse tarp.

"It took me two hours to build this school!"

Sawyer was about to turn the page of his book when he heard someone snickering. He looked up and found that it was John Locke giggling. Stopped in his tracks and staring at him.

"What the hell's so funny, Kojak?"

John shrugged and continued walking along.

"G'bye Mr. Locke!" Bump called after him. She finished tying yet another braid atop Sawyer's head and let it flop onto his forehead.

"What exactly are you doin' to my hair, anyway?" Sawyer asked, pushing back the braid.  
Bump was standing behind him so he couldn't see the sly smile that played on her lips. "It's a new hair style," was all she told him. "You're gonna love it."

"Yeah, I'm gonna love it," he huffed sardonically.

Styling her father's hair was one of Bump's most beloved pastimes. And although Sawyer didn't exactly relish having his hair groomed and primped (by a five year-old no less), he wasn't about to deny his little girl one of her simplest pleasures. Even if it meant that every moron who passed by got to have a good laugh at his expense. 

Though, it beat playing dress-up. And he saw first hand how demeaning that could be every time Charlie paraded around as the ugliest woman on the beach while he played dress-up with Aaron. Often times Aaron wasn't even there.

And it sure as hell beat playing dolls too. Though, Bump didn't exactly enjoy playing dolls with Sawyer either.  
She still remembered the one and only time she'd persuaded him to join her.

"Why would she ever get it on with him?" Sawyer had asked, holding up Aaron's borrowed Barbie Doll. "Look at 'er! She's wearin' gold pants and a fancy sparkle t-shirt! She ain' gonna go for a loser like this!" Bump watched as Sawyer examined the male doll Kate had commissioned Locke to whittle for Bump's fourth birthday. "For one thing, he's made out of wood," he stated, knocking on the doll's head. "For another, the poor bastard's been castrated!"

That was Kate's doing. Locke had made the doll a little too anatomically precise.

It was right about then that Bump quickly realized her father would never be good at playing with dolls. Which was a shame, because neither was her mother. Although Kate was always willing to partake in this alien playtime activity, she'd always just have Barbie climbing up trees. Or tracking boar. Or killing Others. Bump had quickly gotten bored of that too.

All in all, Bump had few friends to call her own. Even her brother refused to play with her. In fact, Gunner had monopolized all the kids on the island. His gang would routinely go out on adventures from which Bump was always excluded.

"Why does everyone love Gunner?" Bump asked as she braided a clump of hair on the crown of Sawyer's head. "He's a pest."  
Sawyer smiled, always impressed with the new words Bump seemed to pick up. "What's all this about?"  
"Soon-Yi loves Gunner."  
"Soon-Yi loves Gunner the way a girlfriend loves her boyfriend."  
"Aaron loves Gunner."  
"Aaron loves Gunner the way a girlfriend loves her boyfriend."  
"Josefina loves Gunner."  
"Josefina loves Gunner the way prison inmates love fish."  
"Huh?"  
"Nothin'."

So with all the kids in school, Bump was left with styling her father's hair. Sawyer learned to accept the braids. Before Bump knew how to make them she would simply content herself with tying his hair into knots. It was Kate-- tired of running her hands through Sawyer's hair and getting her fingers caught in tangles-- who'd taught Bump to properly make braids. Though now she probably regretted that decision.

"Don't you think that's enough on top, Bump?" Sawyer didnt have a mirror, but he knew hair shouldn't feel like it was about to fall over.

"Don't call me Bump."  
"Well _sorry_, Scuttlebug."  
"_Daddy!_"  
"Fine. How 'bout a little less on top, Lily Evangeline Claire Sun Katherine James Rockstar Sam?"

This was Bump's full name. Thanks to the endless supply of heroin the island mysteriously provided, Kate was pretty heavily doped up at the time of Bump's birth. Jack had insisted that heroin was perfectly safe for Kate and Bump. He defended this opinion by holding up a stethoscope and looking pompous.  
As soon as Kate had heard her baby girl's first cries, she grabbed Sawyer's arm and asked, "What are we calling her?"

"Sam, remember?" he'd replied.

"Let's call her Nicole," Kate said, ignoring him, her eyes wide and out of focus. "Nicole Lily."  
"What?"  
"Only, drop the Nicole cuz it's not very cool," she went on. "And add Evangeline. And Claire! Claire's so beautiful. And Sun too. I wanna get on her good side again. And lets name her after me. Katherine. And James too!"  
"But she's a girl, Freckles."  
"And Rockstar, cuz she's a rockstar."  
"And Sam?"  
"Right," Kate had said. "And Sam."

Jack, who was present and had a fondness for multiple names, had written all of these names down on the "official" birth certificate. And he wouldn't change it. Even after Sawyer explained that Kate had no idea what the hell she was saying. 

"That's not my real name," Bump said.  
"Yeah it is."  
"It's Sam. Mommy told me so." Pretty much as soon as Kate had sobered up, she'd denied giving Bump all those names.   
"Yeah well, your Mommy's a liar."  
Sawyer realized he'd said something wrong when he caught the sadness in Bump's eye. "I mean, your mother's the best mother in the world."

Bump's forehead crinkled, just the way Kate's did whenever she looked skeptical. Sometimes Bump looked so much like Kate that it scared him. She had her same dewy skin dusted with freckles, she had her wavy brown hair- though Bump insisted on tying it back to keep it kempt. But she didnt just physically look like Kate- sometimes the way she talked or acted resembled her too. Sometimes Sawyer felt as if it was Kate looking back at him.

He resumed his attention on his book. "So," he said, feigning nonchalance, "your mom been askin' about me any?"  
Bump nodded. "Yesterday she asked me where I got the lollipop you gave me and I told her."  
"And what'd she say?"  
"She said that was very sweet of you." She grabbed a chunk of Sawyer's hair, right above his ear.  
"She did, huh?"  
"Yeah. Then she asked how you were."

Sawyer turned around, forgetting about his book all together. "She asked you that?" Bump nodded again, then sneezed. "Well, what else d'she say?"  
Bump shrugged and sneezed again.  
"You got a cold or somethin'?"

Bump was about to shrug again when she caught a glimpse of something over Sawyer's shoulder. Sawyer recognized the frozen expression on her face and knew that in a second she'd be screaming.

Though in actuality it was more like screeching. Hair-raising, ear-splitting, nail-on-chalkboard screeching. He turned around and found what he expected. Vincent. The dog was slowly approaching the pair of them.

"Git!" Sawyer shouted at him. Bump threw her arms around Sawyer's neck and nearly strangled him to death, holding on so tight. Sawyer raised his arms back, attempting to simultaneously hold on to Bump and block Vincent from getting to her.

Bump had good reason to fear the seemingly harmless pet. There was only one dog on the whole island and Bump was allergic to him. No one knew why she was allergic (Kate and Sawyer weren't allergic to anything). Maybe it was all that heroin at birth. Anyway, she mostly just sneezed and involuntarily teared up whenever the mut was too close but it was enough to get Sawyer into full-on protective mode. He'd tried giving the dog to the Others, knowing how much Ben loved furry little animals, but he somehow found his way back to their island. It was too bad, too. Sawyer had always liked Vincent.

"I will feed you to the Kowns!" He yelled. "Beat it, Scooby Doo!" Yes, Sawyer had resorted to using nicknames on the dog too. In the handy nickname rolodex that was his mind, other canine nicknames included such gems as "Snoop Dog," "Old Yeller" and "Benji."

Vincent stayed put.

"Hold on, Bump." Sawyer slowly got up with Bump hanging onto his back, and sprinted out of there, knowing Vincent was too old and too lazy to chase after them. He piggy-backed her all the way to a growing scene that had formed on the beach. Smoke was billowing from the center of a crowd of onlookers. It seemed like something had burned down.

They got close enough to see that Eko's church was now just a charred pile of logs. Looking at all this, Sawyer only had one thing to say. "Freckles." 

But it was not Freckles. In fact, the only witness to the crime came running into the crowd to declare just who the real culprit was. "I saw who did it!" the little boy yelled, his eyes bulging out of his head in a crazed, angry manner. "It was Gunner!"

All eyes turned to look at Sawyer, and Bump by default. Still on her dad's back, Bump tried to make herself small, ducking her head behind his."Jesus hates Gunner," she whispered into Sawyer's ear.

"There ya go," Sawyer whispered back. "We finally found someone who hates your brother."

Jesus did hate Gunner. And even if he hadnt seen Gunner burning down the church, Jack's youngest (biological!) son still would have accused him of it.

In keeping with the tradition of hispanic-sounding names, Jack had christened his son Jesus Shepard. Though in Spanish "Jesus" would be pronounced "Hey Zeus," Jack pronounced it the English way. Now that Jack had a son named Jesus, he felt more comfortable playing GOD.

Jesus was four years younger than Gunner but he hated him with the hate of men ten times his age. He saw him the way, say, Jack saw Sawyer.

"I saw him! I saw him! I saw him! I saw him!" Jesus yelled, running around the crowd in circles.

Kate, ran in through the crowd too, finally stopping in front on the charred church. "Damn," she said as she delicately touched the blackened wood.  
Sawyer innately knew that she was not sad the church had burned down, rather that she hadn't been there to see the sparks fly.

"Better luck next time, Freckles."

Turning to look at him her bummed expression subsided as she noticed the mohawk of braids situated on his head.

"What did she do to you?" Kate couldn't help the smile in her voice.

Bump grabbed the stray braid sticking out above Sawyer's ear. "Doesn't he look handsome?" She asked, grinning.

Kate smiled and was about to answer her daughter when Jack cleared his throat loudly enough to interrupt them.

"Are we all forgetting something here?" he said. "Gunner burned down the church!"

"What?" Kate said. "Why wasn't he in class?"

"I kicked him out," Jack answered without missing a beat. "We should have a parent/teacher meeting. Over dinner. Pick you up at eight?"

No one could climb trees better than Gunner. Even Kate came in second place now. She'd helped him build the tree house he sat in now. It was his secret hiding spot, hard to find amidst all the trees in the jungle. But Kate knew just where to look. She climbed up to it and sighed with relief when she saw Gunner sitting there, minding his own business.

"You're Okay," she said.

"Why wouldn't I be Okay?" he asked innocently.

"You burned down a church, Gunner."

"No I didnt," he answered plainly, without a moment's hesitation.

Kate sat down in front of him and put her hair behind her ears. "You know I don't like it when you lie to me, Gun."

Gunner looked down, finally seeming to give in.

"I'm not mad," Kate insisted. "Just tell me why you did it."

"I just felt like it."

"You can't just burn things down because you feel like it, Gun." Who was she kidding? "At least not churches," she added quickly.

"But you love burning things."

"There's a difference between being a pyromaniac and an arsonist."

"Well I want to burn things down!" Gunner declared. "I want everything to burn down!"

Kate sat back, listening to what her son was saying but hearing something completely different. She suddenly saw exactly what he meant. And it broke her heart.

"Sweetie," she said, "I know this is hard for you. But your Dad and I still love you. We just can't be together like we used to."

Gunner's eyes began to water and his chin started to quiver. He leaped into her arms without warning and buried his face in her neck. "It's not supposed to be like this," he cried. "It's not supposed to be like--

Desmond woke up with a start.

He felt the twigs and pebbles on the ground digging into his back. It felt very much like the present. He knew immediately that he'd just had a vision of the future. He knew this because he was lying somewhere in the middle of the jungle, sweaty, naked, his mind shrouded in a vague cloud of confusion. This was the way he always found himself after having a vision.

"What's the matter, Desi?" Claire asked. She was lying in the middle of the jungle too; naked, sweaty, and under Desmond's same blanket.

This whole picture– the nakedness, sweatiness, and big old cloud of confusion– also just happened to be the way Desmond always found himself after a night of raucous, yet strangely puritanical love-making with Claire.

Having become the fiercely religious woman she was now, Claire had begun sleeping with Desmond partly because she believed he looked like Jesus. And party because she believed he _was_ Jesus. He did see the future, after all. And there was all that wine that seemed to follow him wherever he went.

"I just had a vision," Desmond said. "Of the future."

Claire sat up, hugging the blanket to her chest. "Was Charlie in it?"

"What?"

"Just tell me! Was he or was he not alive in the future?"

"I don't remember," Desmond replied. "Maybe."

"I know you have this absurd obsession with keeping Charlie alive, Desi, but it's been four years." She narrowed her pale blue eyes at him. "Seriously. _Stop_."

"This wasn't about Charlie!"

"You have to let him die!" Claire exclaimed, ignoring him.

"This was Sawyer and Kate's future. And it was all wrong! I need to change it."

"But you can't change the future," she explained, rolling her eyes. "That's why you keep saving Charlie's life."

"No, no, I can't change death. That's the only certain thing about all this. But once, two years ago, I saw myself in a vision, biting into an apple and eating a worm! After that vision, when I found that apple in the jungle, I just didnt eat it! And I've still never eaten a worm, Love! Don't you see what that means?!"

"You're drunk."

"It means I can change this! I can make it better for them. Gunner was right. It's not supposed to be like this."

He stood up with a new determination and promptly ran through the trees, towards the beach.

"Aaron, you can open your eyes now, dear."

Once over the treeline, Desmond scanned the beach looking for Kate or Sawyer, needing to warn them about their possible future. Finally he spotted Kate.

"Go on, run, Gun!" She was telling her son.

"Kate, you need to listen to me," Desmond said, running over to her. "I just had a vision of your future."

Kate froze when she saw him, and stood even more still as he grabbed her shoulders.

"Do you trust me?" He asked.  
"More than anyone in the world" She said this line to anyone who asked her that question. Force of habit.  
"Good. You _must_ get rid of Sawyer's markers."  
"What?"  
"If you let him keep them they'll destroy your lives forever! I saw you two. You were miserable! Your kids were miserable!"  
"You saw my kids?" Kate asked, taken aback. "Plural?"  
"Yes."  
"Well how many do I have in this future? Do I just keep popping them out? Because Sawyer's condom stash ran out a long time ago and this is not a good look for me--"  
"Just do as I say and you'll be fine," he said. "The markers."

He left Kate standing there dumbfounded and began walking away but then turned and added, "And keep her away from the dog!" pointing to Kate's midsection.

Kate looked down, her hand instinctively coming to rest on her stomach. "Her?" She looked up and watched Desmond go.

Charlie walked over to her, he too watching, mystified, as Desmond disappeared into the trees.

"Desmond's naked," he said.

"Yeah."

Charlie continued watching.


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter 21 (part 1)**

Sawyer was lying on his stomach, one arm stretched out stiff, like a plank off the side of the bed, legs splayed in opposite directions, and the tips of his toes dipped in the sand. Not bothering with a pillow, half his face was buried into the mattress, his slow breaths rustling through the curtain of hair that had fallen into his face. When he was sleeping like this there would be no possible way to move him. 

Beside him, Kate sat up, leaning against the bamboo wall (that doubled as their headboard). She held her knees tightly against her chest, hung her head low, and cried quietly so as not to wake Sawyer. She knew how important sleep was to him and didn't want to burden his tired soul with her petty, hormonal tears. Still, after crying right beside him for 20 minutes, he should've been up by now. So she turned the volume up a bit and let a few heart-wrenching sobs filter through every once in a while. After a few more minutes, she began to suspect that something was wrong. Had he selfishly died in his sleep, and left her a single mother? Again?

Sawyer snored.

Ignoring his snores, Kate nudged him with her foot. Nothing. She kicked him in the ribs. Again, nothing.

"Markers!" she whispered in a sexy rasp.

"Wha?" He murmured, pulling his limbs back. "Mark- uh diju, waycri-- Mornin'?" 

Kate matched his incoherence by continuing her wailing as if she had never stopped.

As soon as he saw what state she was in, Sawyer sat up, alarmed.

"Kate? What is it? Is it Jack again? What did he do?

"No, not Jack. I'm fine," she sniffed. "Go back to sleep."

Sawyer quickly realized what kind of tears these were. Nothing was wrong. It was obviously one of those hormonal outbursts pregnant women seemed to suffer from time to time. The smallest things could set her off. She might have seen a bug getting squashed under Hurley's foot, or Jin smashing a rock into a fish's head, or maybe she'd dropped a mango in the sand. Usually at times like this she just liked being held until she calmed down.

So Sawyer did just that, sitting himself down right in front of her and wrapping his arms around her. This was comfortable. She let her knees fall to the sides, lotus style, and leaned her head against his shoulder. Sawyer did the same, finding a comfortable spot between her shoulder and neck to lay his head down for a while. Then he began to feel a bit too comfortable. 

"I know what will feel better…" his voice trailed off as he planted soft kisses on the side of her neck. And then, leaving all discretion behind; "Sex."  
Taken aback, Kate retorted, "But you're still sleepy."  
"Not all of me is _sleepy_," he drawled. Being barely awake, Sawyer's perverted attempts at seduction were actually sort of endearing. So Kate considered the option for a moment, then pulled away, acting appalled.

"How could you even suggest such a thing. I'm still crying!"

Hormones.

Sawyer mumbled apologetically and took her back into his embrace once again, rubbing her back and eventually her cries began to subside, so he let his eyelids droop. He was just about to nod off when he spotted a copy of _Redneck Sushi_ on the bedside table out of the corner of his eye. Suddenly the cause of her crying became abundantly clear.

"Were you reading this?" he asked, picking it up with two fingers like a dirty diaper. "No wonder you're cryin'."

"It's not that."

"Then what is it, Freckles?"

"It's your markers."

She let that sentence linger in the air for a moment, giving Sawyer enough time to instinctively move a hand to his pocket to feel for his trusty markers. (Yes, Sawyer slept, just as he swam, in his pants.) But his pockets were empty.

"What about them?" He asked cautiously.

Kate squeezed him a little tighter, bracing herself. She had stopped her crying and was   
now eerily calm, her face still wet with tears. "I burned them."

Sawyer's reaction to this news was better than she'd expected. First there was the denial. There was no way Kate would burn his markers. That didn't make any sense. Then he began searching the whole hut for them, looking through every suitcase, in every corner and hidey-hole hoping to find at least one. If he could just hold one in his hand he'd be okay.  
Alas, he found none. 

Next came the anger. Keeping his voice down so as not to wake Gunner, Sawyer muttered a slew of "how could you?!"s and "why in the hell?!"s and "what did I ever do to deserve this?!"s.

Then came the bargaining. He asked Kate if he could just see where she'd burned them, that maybe there was still a sliver of marker left. Sawyer offered up his stash of porn and even promised to reveal his childhood nickname (Douchey McTurdstain) to her if he could just see his markers again. After that was the depression. He got back on the bed and laid, with his back to Kate, in a fetal position, and commenced the moping.

Kate stared at him, disbelievingly. _They're markers!_ she thought. She would never understand his obsession with them, but she now realized she was happy they were gone.

Reaching out to him, she stroked his hair and tried to comfort him the way he had been comforting her before her big reveal.

"I'm sorry," she said. And as a sort of consolation (at least in her mind) she added, "it  
was the most colorful fire I've ever seen."

Sawyer didnt respond.

"Hey, at least you've still got your porn stash."

"That ain' got nothin' to do with it," he said, breaking his short-lived silence. "Just tell me why you did it."

"Desmond told me to."

Sawyer turned to face her. "You burned my markers because that liquor-stealing, hairy-beard-having Scottish bastard told you to?"

"He saw our future, Sawyer! Said if I didn't get rid of your markers that they'd destroy our lives somehow. So yes, I burned them. But I did it for us – and it was beautiful."

Now it was Sawyer's turn to look at her incredulously. "And you believed him? You actually think those markers could've ruined our lives?"

"Well I wasn't going to risk it," she said simply. "Wouldn't you do the same thing? If there was something you could do keep us happy and together, wouldn't you do it?"

This gave him pause. Of course he'd do it, Sawyer knew. And with that thought came acceptance; the final stage in Sawyer's grieving process.

"So we'll be happy in the future?" he asked.

"Of course we will."

"So can we have sex now?"

"Sure, Pookie."  
And surely enough the dream Desmond had that night confirmed that (not the sex, the happy in the future part).  
This new flash of the future revisited the same exact moment in time he'd glimpsed before. Only Sawyer wasn't sleeping on the doormat anymore; he was inside his hut, eating breakfast with his family. There was Gunner, who'd grow up to be an optimist and who, above all else, would be a lover of life and nudity; Bump, who would forever be Sawyer's little girl, would instead of picking up her mom's penchant for skepticism, inherit her tendency to break into a full-blown smile at the smallest things; Jess, who would inevitably trouble his father with his disturbing poetry, his inclination to paint his fingernails black, and just his general faux emo disposition; and Roscoe and Rex, Sawyer and Kate's cherubic twins boys who's names-- which would be both loved and hated by them individually-- would come to shape the course of their future lives as twin cowboy impersonators. But in the meantime they'd spend their childhood entertaining themselves by confusing their mother with their identicalness.

Yes, they would all be happy. Desmond's sense of this was so strong that the feeling was starting to infiltrate his state of mind. In fact, he would've woken up happy if it wasn't for a naked Jack standing over him screaming at him to wake and hurry the hell up.

"Why are you're not having sex?!" Jack had yelled.

There was a course of events that led to that moment. As random as it seemed. 

It all started that morning when Jack decided to sunbathe. Naked.

Jack usually spent his days tending to his gaggle of kids or cutting– nay, ripping-- the sleeves off his shirts or writing laws for his imaginary island government, but today he decided to sunbathe on the roof of his hut.

He liked to sunbathe on his rooftop for the privacy it provided. Also, the first and only time he'd sunbathed naked on the beach, children were locked indoors and meetings were held on the matter.

Anyway, he liked the way the hair on his chest cast hairline shadows on his skin, leaving a wicked-looking zebra-like tan. Which was actually more of a painful sunburn, but Jack liked it all the same. As he thought about this particular phenomenon, he felt a large shadow over him. He opened his eyes– nay, squinted– and saw none other than Juliet sitting beside him, looking right at him. With the sun directly behind her, her head seemed to glow like an angel.

"Mom?"

Awkward. Juliet coughed.

"Oh. Juliet. How did you know I was here?"

"There's a ladder to the roof. The one I'm standing on," she said. "And there was a sign at the bottom that says 'Jose, sunbathing naked. Catch him while you still can.'"   
"Oh, there is?"

"It's in your handwriting, Jack."

"I'm sure many people have that same hand writing. And call me Jose."

"Okay. But it says 'Love, Jose' at the bottom."

"Maybe it says 'Love Jose.' With no comma. Maybe it was written by a fan of mine."

"You have no fans."

"I have many fans."

"Are we seriously having this conversation?"

"Isn't it fascinating, though? It's about me."

"Look, I've got to tell you something."

"Hamburgers?"

"No, I don't have any hamburgers right now. I rushed over here as soon as I–"

"Did Kate say she was in love with me?"

"No, I havent spoken to–"

"Is she leaving Sawyer?"

"This isnt about Kate!"

"Is she coming here?! How does my tan look!?"

"The Others are coming!" Juliet snapped.

"What?"

"We're sick of waiting for your play. We're coming _tonight_. And if you don't  
perform we're going to kill you all."   
"What play?!"

"Redneck Sushi! The play you wrote! How can you not remember it?"

"Right! Of course! Redneck Sushi is the title of the play, and what a mighty fine title it is, let me say. We've been working on that for months… I was just... testing you."

In truth, he'd absolutely forgotten all about his play. And even Alex, there to be his writing assistant, was more busy fixing him tropical drinks in coconuts these days than pestering about her "favorite piece of literature ever written."

"Well, we're coming tonight," Juliet continued. "And we expect to see a crowd-pleaser."

"But we've only had one rehearsal!" Jack spat. Angrily. The whole camp was in danger of being killed so he had an obligation to spit angrily. If there was one thing he knew how to do well it was to get mad at people when they were in danger of dying because of him. 

"You better get to it, then."

Juliet calmly climbed down to the ground and skipped away. It was eerie.

Slightly stunned, Jack quickly jumped to his feet. The sudden shift in weight caused the roof to collapse and the next thing he knew, he was lying on the floor of his hut, the ruins of his kitchen table underneath. Ever resilient, he got back up and sprinted toward the door, but then skidded to a stop, pausing. He was still naked, but there was no time to change. He ran back over to what was left of the kitchen table and fished out a small tea towel. It was clean, but it was far too small (it wasn't). Instead he grabbed his plastic 7-Eleven collector's cup promoting _Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets_ (he'd miraculously found it in the wreckage after the crash) and used it to cover his manhood. Incidentally, the rim was still stained with Mango Surprise. At least that was his story.

"Do you still want your mimosa, Jose?" Alex asked, peeking over the new hole in the roof where she was still sunbathing herself, undisturbed. 

"No time!" Jack spat. "Just pour it into my mouth!"

Alex tipped over the coconut husk holding the juice. 

It splashed onto Jack's face.

The orange juice stung his eyeballs but there was no time to worry about that. Hastily, he ran to each hut, bursting through every door to warn them of what Juliet had said. Knocking would've taken too long.

What he found in Claire's hut should've made him turn away but instead he attentively watched Charlie having sex with Claire. Or what looked like sex.  
Had Jack known that Claire was his sister, he probably would've beaten Charlie up. Or given him a congratulatory pat on the back,. He wasn't very well-versed on the formalities of it all. 

"I thought you were a lesbian!" Jack spat.  
"Oi! I am!" Charlie responded. "And keep your voice down!"

"Is Claire asleep?"

"She's just pretending!"

Claire snored.

Jack promptly left the hut and moved onto the next one: Jin and Sun's.

"Jin! Sun! What the hell are you two doing!"

Of course, they too were having sex. Only the two of them were so still and stiff that it looked like a pair glued-together mannequins at a book club meeting. Sun _did_ appear to be reading a book.

Jack stood in their doorway, staring. Sun and Jin ever so slowly (as it was their custom when they were unexpectedly found naked) reached for their clothes. Sun also dog-eared the page she was up to in her book.

Jack couldn't wait for ever. He had too many people left to interrupt. Next he barged into Locke's hut and found Sawyer's Aunt Meg tapping the bald man's head like bongos. He didnt need to see the rest of their sex.

Bizarrely, it seemed as if every couple on the island was having sex at the very instant that jack decided to barge in on them. And yet, he knew in his heart of hearts that Sawyer and Kate would not be havings ex. They simply couldn't be. Kate would never stand for such a thing, he was sure. He was fairly certain that she still rued the day Sawyer had gotten her pregnant. With this thought in mind he stormed through their door.

Of course Sawyer and Kate were having sex. And as much as Jack tried to convince himself that Kate wasn't enjoying it, it was evident that she obviously was. 

"Um," Jack said. "What the _ef_?"

Sawyer and Kate had not noticed that Jack had walked into their home. They were too preoccupied.  
They quickly disentangled themselves and covered up.

"Is this pity sex?" Jack spat.

"Jack!" Kate shouted. "What the hell are you doin' here?"

"Delusion sex?" He went on. "Insecurity sex? Hate sex? You're having sex because you hate each other, right?"  
"Get out!"

"Jealousy sex? It's jealousy sex, isn't it?"

Sawyer managed to put his pants on in time to forcefully throw Jack out before he could declare to know jealousy sex when he saw it.

Jack got as far as Ana Lucia and Libby's tent and even Rose and Bernard's before he realized that yes, everyone on the island was having sex.

But thankfully, he'd managed to stop them all. And when they all, hours later, finally agreed to leave their tents and give Jack the attention he demanded, he took the lot of them on a little trip to a clearing in the woods.

He convinced them all to come on said trip by telling them that the Others were coming at that moment to kill them all. Not the truth... but still a lie.

"What are we doing here?" Sun asked, clutching Soon-Yi.

"I'm glad you asked, Sun," Jack said. "I went you all to look at that tree over there."

He pointed to a lone tree a little ways away from where he stood. It was quite a beautiful tree, actually. A willow tree. Very well-liked for the peacefulness and shade it provided on a sunny day. The children on the island would often run circles around it as their parents enjoyed eating mangos beneath it. Kate particularly knew the tree well. She once vowed never to climb it.

"Alex!" Jack yelled.

Alex flipped a switch and blew the tree to pieces.

The group of islanders ducked and shielded their crying children from the explosion. They stood there, too stunned to speak. Jack seemed satisfied.

"The Others are coming to see my play tonight," he began, appropriated a sufficient amount of tension in his voice while maintaining that crazed look in his eyes. "And when they get here? We're gonna blow 'em all to hell...with my talent."

Incredulous stares abound.

Jack expected applause at the very least (and a parade at the most). Instead, he felt the need to explain himself. 

"The explosion symbolized my talent. And the tree symbolized the Others."


End file.
